Meaning Change in Grammaticalization
Fu¨r Pirmin der die Grenzen der Sprache erforscht
Meaning Change in Grammaticalization An Enquiry into Semantic Reanalysis
R E G I N E E C KA R D T
1
3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Regine Eckardt 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN 019–926260–8 978–019–926260–1 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction
vii 1
2 Meaning Change under Reanalysis: Previous Views
22
3 Truth Conditional Semantics
59
4 What is Going to Happen
91
5 From Step to Negation: The Development of French Complex Negation Patterns
128
6 From Intensifier to Focus Particle
171
7 To Be or Not to Be a Determiner
202
8 Semantic Reanalysis: The Algebraic Backbone of Meaning Change
235
Appendix: Definitions from Logic and Model Theory
250
Source Texts by Chapter
255
References
264
Index
281
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Acknowledgements Many persons and events influenced the making of this book, some in quite unforeseen ways. I want to thank all those friends and colleagues who were willing to discuss aspects of meaning change, and patient enough to follow the winding road of my expositions, pointing out short cuts or dead ends. Some deserve special mention. Miriam Butt who convinced me that grammaticalization was really a topic worth looking into. Urs Egli who followed my investigations with a patient fatherly eye (even though he may have had other ideas about what I should be doing at times). Aditi Lahiri who taught me that the best was the least I could give. Irene Wolke without whom life would have been impossible. The lively crowd of Dutch semanticians who taught me that science and fun need not contradict each other, and who respected me even though I was ‘going historical’. Elizabeth Closs Traugott who respected me even though I was ‘insisting on being formal’, and who helped me with her sharp comments to remedy at least some of the inconsistencies in my thinking and writing. Ekkehard Ko¨nig who showed me exciting new fields for exploration. Christoph Schwarze and Judith Meinschaefer who assisted me in the interpretation of Old French examples. Ede and Ce´cile who had their own special share in the project. Ewald Lang who not only chaperoned an earlier version of this book safely through the formalities of a Habilitationsverfahren but who even read and seemed to like it. Renate and Claudia, invaluable companions on the thorny road to light in German academia. Manfred Krifka and the people at ZAS Berlin who offered me a new intellectual and institutional home, and who soon turned from colleagues into friends. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft which funded project A1, part of the SFB 471 Konstanz, and made this research possible.
viii
Acknowledgements
John Davey of Oxford University Press who kept his constructive and helpful attitude in spite of unforeseen twists and turns in the project. Manfred, Luzie, and Pirmin, who will always show me where real life is. Go¨ttingen September 2005
1 Introduction 1.1 Meaning Change under Reanalysis The present monograph investigates meaning change under reanalysis in the paradigm of truth conditional semantics. I will defend the claim that this combination of framework and subject is a fruitful one and can help us to gain a better understanding of the meaning shifts and changes that occur in structural reanalysis. Importantly, detailed semantic representations can oVer an explanation for historical data that were viewed as unexplainable accidents by earlier approaches. Let me start with an example to illustrate the issues that will be pursued, and consider the development of periphrastic perfect tenses in European languages. The stages are outlined in Meillet (1909) as follows. Classical Latin, as well as Celtic and Gothic, only used inXected past tenses. Contemporary European languages, in contrast, often possess a construction to report about the past on the basis of an auxiliary ‘have’ plus past participle of the verb. Hence we will conjecture that the construction must have originated somewhere. How does such a construction emerge? Most authors who investigated this topic agree on the following basic steps, illustrated by (made-up) English examples.1 In an initial stage, the language can use participial forms of the verb only to ascribe a property, as in the example in (1.1): (1.1) verb: to use participle: used car Such modiWed nouns could be used as objects of transitive verbs, in particular with the full verb have as in (1.2):
1 The invented example is backed up by the extensive survey of English data in Visser (1969, 1973) on the use of have + past participle. Focused discussions in Brinton (1988: 94 V.) and Carey (1994) oVer more detailed hypotheses about the actual progress of the development and Olbertz (1993, 1998) complements these in an interesting way with the development of complex perfects from Latin to Spanish. Composite perfect tenses in other Romance languages have likewise received thorough investigation (e.g. Meillet 1909, Benveniste 1960, 1968, Dietrich 1987, Harris and Ramat 1987, Salvi 1987).
Introduction
2
(1.2) Tom has used cars. At that stage, example (1.2) unambiguously had the structure in (1.2a). The verb have denoted possession and related the subject—the possessor— to the possessed object. In this case, the possessed object was described by a noun and further qualiWed by an adjectival form of the verb use. (1.2) a. [Tom]NP [hasmain verb [used cars]NP ]VP Under this analysis, the sentence leaves the agent of the verb use open. Tom may have used the cars, but he may also be in the car trade and own cars that were used by others.2 At some point, however, speakers saw a new syntactic analysis of (2), namely the one in (1.2b) where the two verbs were tied closer together, their subjects were uniWed, and have, rather than denoting possession, made a more abstract temporal contribution. (1.2) b. [Tom]NP [ [hasAux usedmain verb ][cars]NP ]VP In the step from (a) to (b), sentence (1.2) received a new syntactic analysis and a new tense construction emerged: have + participle. The verb have changed its status from full verb to auxiliary, and the status of the participle in the overall grammatical system changed likewise: while only transitive verbs allow for a predicative participle, the perfect can be formed for intransitive verbs as well (as shown by the contrast between *the laughed man and the man has laughed). Soon, the construction in (1.2b) would spread and a wealth of new perfect tense constructions would Xourish. So far the broad outline of the development. The reorganization of syntactic structure between (1.2a) and (1.2b) is an instance of reanalysis. The following classical characterization by Langacker (1977) is still valid: ‘change in the structure of an expression or class of expressions that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modiWcation of its surface manifestation’ (Langacker 1977: 58). Importantly, the structural reanalysis from (1.2a) to (1.2b) must be accompanied by appropriate meaning changes in the partaking words and constructions. The semantic contributions of have, participle, and their combination with the subject noun phrase needed to change under reanalysis. Apparently, speakers were able to abstract suitable new meanings from the Wrst instances of reanalysis they encountered, and apply them in new contexts.
2
Obviously the have + participle construction emerged long before any of the communities knew cars. I used this ahistorical example, however, because ‘used cars’ is a salient category today, hence facilitating access to the older reading of example (1.2).
Introduction
3
In fact, many instances of structural reanalysis require concomitant appropriate semantic changes in order for the new construction to be meaningful. While the causal dependencies between changes in meaning and in form are still subject to debate, it is apparent and never has been doubted that speakers are somehow able to make the required semantic shifts. The fact that all competent speakers seem to be able to perform the necessary semantic operations does, however, not imply that we need not investigate what they do, and how they do it. In fact, the great ease and reliability with which semantic changes under reanalysis occur should have far-reaching repercussions on our conception of semantic processing. The semantic side of reanalysis witnesses the great analytical potential and logical systematicity of human speakers, as well as the ingenious way in which natural languages combine reliable stability and Xexible elements, allowing adaptation to new communicative needs in reliable ways without disturbing the function of language as a tool for communication. The present monograph aims at contributing to our understanding of meaning change under reanalysis. The next section will brieXy relate the topic of the book to major trends in diachronic linguistics. Section 1.3 oVers a closer view on the well-deWned steps taken by speakers in reanalysis, speakers who are conWdent that their individual actions cohere with the linguistic practices of their language community and will not lead them into linguistic obscurity. In section 1.4 I will deWne the speciWc new perspective of the present monograph. Semantic change under reanalysis will be approached with the tools of formal, truth value based semantics, a means of investigation that has so far not been brought to bear on diachronic linguistics. The Wnal section oVers an outline of the further course of the book.
1.2 Some Background The investigation of meaning change dates back to at least the work of Hermann Paul, who could himself draw on the wealth of material that was collected to Wll the Wrst volumes of the largest etymological dictionary in German, the Deutsche Wo¨rterbuch of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm. Paul proposed the four-way distinction of meaning change through generalization, speciWcation, metaphor, and metonymy as the basic categories of meaning change (Paul 1880). More elaborate theories followed, e.g. in Stern (1931), Ullmann (1957), or more recently Blank (1997). Apart from these comprehensive studies in meaning change, some visibly productive modes of meaning change have also inspired scholarly investigation, notably meaning change by
4
Introduction
metaphor (Indurkhya 1992, LakoV and Johnson 1980), metonymy (e.g. Panther 1999), and via prototype shifts (Dik 1977, Geeraerts 1997). In spite of all attested regularities, it is undeniable that meaning change is driven by language external factors perhaps more than any other mode of language change and therefore has a notoriously contingent quality. This feeling is nicely expressed in the resigned remark of Ferdinand de Saussure that si le franc¸ais poutre ‘jument’ a pris le sens de ‘pie`ce de bois, solive’, cela est duˆ a` des causes particulie`res . . . ce n’est qu’un accident parmi tous ceux qu’enregistre l’histoire d’une langue (Saussure 1962: 131 f.). (‘That French poutre ‘mare’ has acquired the meaning ‘piece of wood, rafter’ is due to particular causes . . . It is only one accident among all those registered in the history of the language’, trans. Wade Baskin)
This does not exclude the possibility, however, that there are subWelds of meaning change that are driven by linguistic factors. The present study addresses meaning change in a more limited sense, namely as it occurs in language change by reanalysis. This might oVer a more interesting Weld for linguistic research than the case of Saussure’s mare. First, the words, phrases, or morphemes under change hold diVerent structural positions in the sentence before and after reanalysis. It is commonly assumed that the semantic evaluation of a sentence is driven by the semantic content of the parts of the sentence and the way in which they are composed. Consequently, if an item changes its structural relation to other material in the sentence, we will necessarily witness some meaning changes that are driven by, or reXect, these structural changes. The item may have to combine with new arguments, be modiWed by new operators, or in the extreme case changes its status entirely from functor to argument or vice versa. Meaning changes in reanalysis are driven by the requirements of the syntax–semantics interface. Secondly, research over the past twenty years suggests that meaning change in reanalysis is driven by a uniform pragmatic process: pragmatic inferencing and subsequent semanticization of the originally inferred information (e.g. Hopper and Traugott 1993, Levinson 2000). This conWrms the traditional view that grammaticalization requires a uniform mechanism of semantic change, and yet our understanding of the nature of this process has changed considerably since the early work on grammaticalization. While Meillet or von der Gabelentz refer to it as ‘weakening’ or ‘bleaching’ (Meillet 1912, Gabelentz 1901), it has become increasingly clear that semantic change in reanalysis
Introduction
5
is more than a mere unspeciWc loss in content. Building on pragmatics, semantic change in reanalysis has been described as a gain of meaning by pragmatic inferencing accompanied by a loss of meaning at other ends. It will be one of the aims of the book to achieve a more detailed understanding of exactly this process. Finally, meaning change in reanalysis is suspected to be the driving factor in the process rather than just one aspect involved (see Auwera 2002: 23 who quotes more proponents of this position). We can therefore investigate the amazing process in which particular communicative interactions between speakers lay the seeds of change in structure as well as meaning. Importantly, the new expressive possibilities that emerge in the process can have repercussions on language as a whole. Heine (1997a: 154) states that speakers are not just passive victims of their grammar. Meaning change in reanalysis might support his view that they are language builders as much as language consumers. Even though reanalysis is widely acknowledged as a major force in language change, there is no particular branch of linguistic study devoted to the process. Two areas of diachronic research turn out to be particularly relevant to the topic: the investigation of grammaticalization and studies in the emergence of discourse markers. Investigations in grammaticalization were inspired by questions like: where does grammar come from? What is the origin of inXections, auxiliaries, agreement marking, aYxes of various functions, and other constructions in language that look like grammar more than like content? Where and when do the speakers of a language decide which contents and categories should be expressed by way of grammatical elements? Case studies over a long time, taking a wealth of languages into account, proved that grammatical elements in language develop from formerly transparent constructions, frequently by structural reanalysis. The cyclic development of analytic and synthetic future tenses in Latin and French is a classical example of the process: (1.3) Expression of future tense: we will sing Pre-Latin Latin French canta-bimus *kanta bh umos > sing be-2Pl.pres. sing-2Pl.fut. cantare habemus > chante-rons sing have-2Pl.pres. sing-2Pl.fut. allons chanter go-2Pl.pres sing
6
Introduction
Grammaticalization theory addresses all cases where an item (word, aYx, phrase, construction) undergoes a change that aVects its grammatical category and, potentially, also the morphosyntactic structure of the sentence in which the item occurs. As one consequence, the item will also function diVerently in the semantic interpretation of the sentence. It contributes at a diVerent place, can change its argument structure, take new items as arguments, or Wll the argument slots of diVerent operators. Other well-known examples of grammaticalization are the emergence of have + participle perfect tense forms in diVerent European languages that was brieXy described above, the emergence of go(ing) future tenses in English and other languages (which will be investigated in Chapter 5), the development of prepositional phrases into sentence connectives (e.g. German in der Folge dessen ‘in the consequent of that’ > infolgedessen ‘therefore’), or of complex phrases into prepositions (German oVers examples like untar zwiske´n ‘in the middle between two’ > zwischen ‘between’, or the gerund wa¨hrendes (Krieges) ‘(with) lasting war’ into a preposition + noun phrase wa¨hrend des Krieges ‘during the war’). Chapter 2 will oVer a more detailed review of data, theories, and methods in grammaticalization research. The second relevant domain of diachronic research, one that has increasingly gained interest over the last years, is the emergence of discourse markers (e.g. Abraham 1991, Brinton 1996, Wegener 2002, Schwenter and Traugott 2000, Gu¨nthner 2001/t.a., Barth-Weingarten and Couper-Kuhlen 2002). Let me give an example. (1.4) German bloß (¼ only) a. Focus particle use Ich kann kommen, ich habe bloß einen Schnupfen. I can come I have only a cold ‘I can well come, I have only a cold.’ b. Discourse marker use Ich wu¨rde gerne kommen, bloß, ich habe einen I would with-pleasure come only I have a Schnupfen. cold ‘I would love to come, but I have a cold.’ The discourse particle use in (1.4b) developed from the focus particle use in (1.4a) which itself goes back to the adjective bloß (‘bare’) and arose in the Wfteenth century (Pfeifer 1995). The two versions of bloß diVer in their syntactic behaviour, most notably in that only the discourse particle can conjoin two main clauses as in (1.4b). The semantic reXex of this diVerence
Introduction
7
in scope can be seen when comparing the meaning contribution of the two versions of bloß. The focus particle, like English only, makes a quantiWcational or scalar contribution to the information conveyed by the sentence. In (1.4a), the second clause can mean either ‘I have a cold and no other diseases’ or ‘I have a fairly minor disease, namely a cold’. The Wrst sentence is not involved in the interpretation of bloß. In (1.4b), in contrast, bloß serves to relate the two propositions expressed by the two sentences: ‘I would love to come’ and ‘I have a cold’. Bloß expresses that proposition 2 stands against acting according to proposition 1—in other words, (1.4b) is a polite way to decline an invitation. Scheier (2002) provides a more extensive discussion of the example, but the important Wnding is that the discourse marker function can emerge in potentially ambiguous uses of focus particle bloß as in (1.5). Crucially, the utterance leaves it open whether the second sentence is a mere afterthought of the Wrst or adversative: (1.5) Ich ko¨nnte kommen . . . ich habe bloß einen Schnupfen I could come . . . I only have a cold While the development of discourse particles shares some core properties with cases of grammaticalization, notably structural reanalysis and parallel semantic change in certain contexts, the resulting pathways of language change also show some striking diVerences from traditional grammaticalization.3 I therefore list them separately in order to stress the common theme— structural reanalysis and accompanying semantic changes—and avoid distracting discussions about the proper domain of the term ‘grammaticalization’. In the next chapter, I will review some arguments that have been oVered against and in favour of subsuming the rise of discourse particles under grammaticalization. Let us turn to the pragmatic inferences that pave the way for reanalysis. Traugott and Dasher (2002) oVer a very elaborate account which will serve as a reference theory in the following. I will introduce their main ideas on the basis of an example, the development of since from temporal to causal connective (data from Traugott and Ko¨nig 1991). Originally, since (OE siþþan) was used only in a temporal sense, as a preposition in the sense ‘after’ and as a sentence connective in the sense ‘from the time that’. Traugott and Ko¨nig 3 Incidentially, German nur and bloß seem to pose a counterexample against the unidirectionality hypothesis according to which grammaticalization is a largely one-way process. The two words have developed in exactly opposite directions on the same pathway of change. While nur stems from the complex conjunctive phrase (iz) ni waˆri ¼ ‘would it not be that . . .’ and only later became a focus particle, bloß started out as a focus particle and developed its conjunctive discourse marker use only later. To my knowledge, no other example of a forward-and-backward development has so far been attested in the literature.
8
Introduction
demonstrate that sentences conjoined with a temporal connective ‘from that time on’ often may plausibly give rise to an inference to the end that the former event not only preceded but caused the latter. The following is an example. (1.6) þa, siþþan he irre wæs & gewundod then after/since he angry was and wounded he ofslog micel þæs folces he slaughtered much of-that troop (King Alfred’s Orosius, ed. H. Sweet (EETS, 1883): 156, 11) The reader of (1.6) will plausibly have assumed that the referent (in fact, the passage is about an elephant) started to slaughter the troop not just after but because it got wounded and angry. Yet, as the authors show, at the time this must have been an inference and the larger narrative context of the sentence makes it clear that the writer used siþþan in (1.6) in a temporal sense. The new meaning of since arises through pragmatic inference. First, isolated examples like (1.6) will give rise to the inference from temporal sequence to causality. Second, these inferences will be appropriate so frequently that they become part of the conventional interpretation of the respective sentences. Speakers and hearers will, to put it simply, rather understand the sentence with the respective implicature than without. At that stage, Wnally, speakers and hearers have the choice to reorganize the information conveyed by the sentence. Instead of interpreting since S2 , S1 in the two-stage process in (1.7): (1.7) Old: literal meaning: S1 from the time on that S2 inference: S2 caused S1 the sentence is somehow reorganized so as to convey literally what previously had been an inference, at the cost of losing the previously conveyed temporal information: (1.8) New: literal meaning: S1 because of S2 Evidence for the new way to interpret siþþan is uses in which a temporal interpretation does not make any sense. A modern example might be Tom will not understand this since he is a man. Traugott and Ko¨nig oVer the older example in (1.9):
Introduction (1.9)
9
Ac ic þe wille nu giet getæcan þone weg . . . siððan ðu ongitst But I thee will now still teach that way . . . since thou seest
þurh mine lare hwæt sio sode gesælð bið, & through my teaching what that true happiness is, and hwær-hie bið where-it is . . . ‘But still I will now teach you the way . . . since through my teaching you see what true happiness is, and where it is’ King Alfred’s Old English Version of Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. W. J. SedgeWeld (Oxford, 1899): 36 104. 26) They report that siððan in this sentence translates the Latin quoniam (‘because’). This coheres with the Wnding that, the second clause making an atemporal statement, a temporal interpretation would be out of place here. The pragmatic nature of this kind of change was Wrst suggested by Traugott (1988). While the process was still classed as metonymic in Hopper and Traugott (1993), recent literature highlights its independent status and refers to it as historical pragmatics, Generalized Invited Inferences, or Semantic Reanalysis. A considerable body of literature has emerged, complementing case studies (e.g. Giacalone Ramat and Hopper 1998, Pagliuca 1994, Wischer and Diewald 2002, Sweetser 1990) with more methodological considerations (e.g. Traugott and Dasher 2002: chs. 1 and 2, Heine 2002, Diewald 2002).
1.3 The ConWdent Speaker What causes and enables speakers/hearers to proceed from (1.7) to (1.8)? At the initial stage, the speaker possesses an item of her language, including speciWc lexical information about its semantic and syntactic nature and the conventions that govern its use. The speaker/hearer encounters communicative situations where another person uses this item in some sentence. The entire sentence gives rise to pragmatically driven inferences that convey information beyond the literally expressed sentence content. The individual (hearer, in the situation) will understand literal and side messages, but something occurs in addition. The individual feels invited (sometimes consciously, but more often unconsciously) to adopt a new lexical entry into her mental lexicon. She hypothesizes that the surface form of the item should be paired with new syntactic and semantic information. She will hypothesize this even though she initially understood the sentence on the basis of the old lexical entry for the item. Otherwise she would not have understood anything. This raises the question why the urge for reanalysis arises at all.
10
Introduction
The urge to reanalyse cannot be stimulated by the mere occurrence of pragmatic inferences alone. Pragmatic inferencing happens all the time. Practically all investigations in discourse semantics show that virtually no sentence is ever understood solely on the basis of the literal contribution of its words alone. Neo-Gricean accounts of pragmatic inferencing, for instance, distinguish between conversational and conventional implicatures. We know that even conventional implicatures can remain for centuries what they are: conventional additional messages rather than part of the literal meaning of a sentence. In spite of the omnipresence of conversational and conventional pragmatic implicatures, the vast majority of communication does not give rise to reanalysis and meaning change. We even use many standing phrases like it is cold here to convey something that diVers from their literal content (‘close the window’) without visible traces of incipient meaning change. Noveck (2001) discusses the example of number terms where conventional implicature (‘exactly n’) has a demonstrably diVerent status from literal meaning (‘at least n’), even though the implicature is witnessed in the data as far back as we Wnd uses of number terms. We may therefore conclude that sentences that do give rise to reanalysis need something in addition to a conventionalized pragmatic inference. For one thing, the surface parts of the sentence have to match the parts of the information conveyed in ways that allow a rebuilding of the sentence (syntactically as well as semantically) in a new way. No proper match—no reanalysis. While this observation may be self-evident, it is so far not captured by theories of meaning change in reanalysis, mainly because existing approaches do not address the syntax–semantics interface explicitly. Another precondition that drives the restructuring process is that reanalysis is bound to respect linguistic universals. In view of the fact that there is little agreement about the list of linguistic universals, the reader might doubt whether this precondition is of any practical value. Interestingly, we witness the driving force of semantic universals at least in some cases. Chapter 7 will discuss an instance of reanalysis where semantic change is visibly restricted by semantic universals. We would also expect that the communicative characteristics of onset contexts of change diVer from ordinary contexts of use in signiWcant ways. Existing literature suggests at least one criterion, namely that the relevant pragmatic implicature should arise in many uses of some construction, and therefore be subject to conventionalization (see Lehmann 2002, Traugott and Dasher 2002, Bybee 2003). Comparisons between related languages however show clearly that similar source constructions with equal pragmatic potential can develop into new
Introduction
11
constructions in one language but remain stable in another language. English has a future expressed by going to, German has a construction geh- (zu) tun with the same pragmatic potential as English, but does not have a geh- zu tun future. Likewise, French possesses a venir de faire immediate past (‘come from doing’), but English and German do not. Yet the pragmatic potential between French je viens de faire les achats and English I am coming from doing the shopping does not diVer. Chapter 5 will address exactly this point: what kind of contexts of uses of going to do did English speakers encounter, but not German speakers, which caused English but not German to develop a going to future?4 A variant of this argument can be developed on the basis of rare but transparent grammaticalizations. Consider the following striking instance of a future tense form on basis of the verb ‘say’ in several Central Eastern Bantu languages (spoken in Malawi, northern Mozambique, southern Tanzania, Zambia). The examples in (1.10) and (1.11) are taken from Botne (1998): (1.10) Tumbuka (Central Eastern Bantu, Botne 1998: 207) wa-ti wa-lut-e 3sg-say 3sg-go-FV ‘s/he will go (soon)’ (1.11)
Makonde (Central Eastern Bantu, Botne 1998: 207) a-cı´ (a-)sum-e´ 3sg-say 3sg-buy-FV ‘s/he will buy (soon)’ (FV is used by Botne for ‘future vowel’, another part of the future construction which is, however, not addressed in the article)
While the reader is referred to the original source for the details of this instance of grammaticalization, the construction as such appears to be well motivated. It is so just because we frequently use similar constructions in German or English that give rise to suitable pragmatic inferences. (1.12) Sie sagt, sie kauft noch Brot. She says she buys prt. bread ‘she says that she will buy bread’ Inference: She will buy bread.
4 The reader may immediately point out that German, in contrast to English, does not have a progressive form and that the progressive seems to play a crucial role in the development of the going to future. Note however that French does have a GO future (aller faire quelque chose) on the basis of the simple tense of aller (‘go’). More typological comparisons will follow in Chapter 5.
12
Introduction
While some other aspects of this actual example may block reanalysis (for instance the overt subject pronoun of the embedded clause), we can certainly Wnd other languages that pattern with Eastern Bantu languages and still do not have a say-do future. The type is rare and is neither listed in Heine (1993) nor Heine and Kuteva (2002) (see Uche 1996/7 for a similar construction for Obolo (Benue Congo family), and Holm 2000 on Creoles). What kind of situations might have occurred in Bantu speaker communities that did not arise at other places in the world? Before I continue, let me clarify some terminology. Throughout this work, we will always be concerned with a surface form—an aYx, a word, a phrase, a complex construction—that undergoes a change both in grammatical status and in meaning. Following the view that the linguistic sign is determined by sound, grammar, and meaning, we will say that a new linguistic item has developed from an older linguistic item even though they sound the same. The old linguistic item does not immediately cease to exist. Old and new item are related by polysemy (the two items share the same surface form and are closely related in meaning). In the course of time, old and new item frequently also diverge in surface forms. Yet I will focus on the initial phase of change and do not address morphophonological diVerentiations in particular. We will use ‘item’ as a short term for ‘aYx, word, phrase, or complex construction’ in order to make it clear that reanalysis can apply below, at, and above the word level. It is one of the fascinating aspects of historical pragmatics that it forces us to relate global changes in language to individual speakers, their communicative activities, and their individual linguistic competence (a view already implicit in Paul’s work). Under this perspective, I will sometimes say that speakers possess a ‘lexical entry’ for some surface form, or that they consciously or unconsciously form hypotheses about a new lexical entry for a given surface form. Two provisos seem necessary in order to prevent misunderstandings. First, I assume that lexical entries are available for all items of a language. In particular, we not only have ‘lexical entries for lexical words’ to the exclusion of grammatical words or forms. ‘Lexical entry’ is used here in the spirit of large-scale computational grammars (LFG, HPSG). They require an entry for each and every item in a given language in order to do successful parses and productions, and real speakers need the same. The second proviso concerns the question of how literally we should understand that some speaker is in possession of a lexical entry for a given item. The reader will soon see that the denotations we are dealing with are sometimes frighteningly formal. One may not Wnd it very plausible to literally hold such a thing in one’s mind. I do not claim that we literally possess these semantic objects.
Introduction
13
Speakers however seem to master some kind of lexical entry, and the formal objects that will be used throughout the book model certain relevant aspects of what speakers actually do possess. The relation between semantic theory and cognition is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. Coming back to our conWdent speaker, let us assume that all communicative and structural prerequisites are fulWlled and the speaker Wnds herself in a situation where she feels invited (unconsciously or consciously) to reconstruct some inference as the literal meaning of a sentence. The core task for the speaker will consist in designing a new semantic evaluation of the given sentence, including hypotheses about hitherto unknown meanings of some of its parts, in order systematically to derive the given proposition as the literal meaning of the sentence. An analogy in the domain of elementary calculus might be helpful. We can solve equations with one unknown element, like 5 þ 3 þ x ¼ 12. Knowing that the total sum is 12, and knowing that the other summands are 5 and 3, we are able to infer that the unknown summand must be 4. In reanalysis, speakers master an analogous task in the composition of meaning: they are solving a semantic equation. The (understood) meaning of the overall sentence and the meanings of the stable parts will determine the ‘missing bit’, i.e. the hypothetical new meaning x for the item-under-change. Speakers can bridge the gap between sentence and word. Clearly, speakers are able to make conscious guesses or subconscious assumptions about sensible meaning contributions of items-under-change. Yet little has been said so far about the linguistic competences that underlie this guessing process. Will the hypothetical new meaning be vague, provisional, subject to further adjustments? The data as well as our own daily experience suggest the contrary and seem to indicate that semantic equations are solved with a precision that could be likened to problem solving in algebra. Speakers use the newly emerged words, constructions, or phrases with great conWdence and conciseness. Grammaticalization, the creation of new discourse markers, and other instances of reanalysis generally do not evoke a feeling of uneasiness in those who use the new item. To highlight that this is so, compare your everyday feelings about grammar (if one has such a thing) with the uncertainties that come along with the acquisition of new technical terms, expressions of an unfamiliar register or of foreign origin. We sometimes use foreign or rare words in a hesitant way, imitating others and hoping to meet common linguistic practice. We hardly ever use grammatical constructions in that way. Given that present-day English or German is changing now as it did at any time, this introspective experience is suited to
14
Introduction
show that speakers master new items after reanalysis as precisely and securely as old items before reanalysis. On a more objective level, the facts about the use of the newly emerged item likewise oVer evidence in favour of the assumption that the conWdent speaker immediately possesses a speciWc lexical entry for the item-after-reanalysis. The argument is more intricate, however, and should become clearer once we turn to real case studies. The general point is this: if we assumed that speakers hold a tentative, vague meaning for the newly emerged item, we would expect that the item’s lexical entry becomes more and more elaborate and detailed over the years when speakers by careful experimenting and mutual imitation develop more precise ideas about use and meaning of the new item. Yet, it turns out that not all data can plausibly be explained as a careful extension of use, guided and shaped by mutual observation and imitation between speakers. Sometimes, we Wnd gaps in the use of a new item. Certain kinds of constructions which should be possible in principle are just not there in the data. Such gaps can remain for centuries to the present day where contemporary speakers agree that the respective sentences sound ungrammatical. Certainly, we can only get judgements about ungrammaticality from living speakers while the absence of data in source texts as such is not telling. Hence, one might argue that the present-day ungrammaticality judgements are the result of later consolidation processes and do not tell us anything about the lexicon of those early speakers who implemented the change. However, the process of emergence of a new item can frequently already oVer an explanation for such judgements—given that we grant that speakers in the initial stages of change possess a fully speciWed new item in their lexicon rather than a vague scheme to experiment with. The argument is then one of simplest possible explanation: why should we posit that some facts about grammar emerged by further unknown accidents in history if we can also explain them as a systematic result of the very origin of the item? Another variant of this argument can be given on the basis of changes where speakers seem to make over-use of an item and allow it in more constructions than seem to be licensed by the ongoing change. Speaker communities can show great homogeneity and systematicity in such ‘puzzling’ uses. These cases are often advanced as prime evidence in favour of the view that playful experimenting is a major force in language change. This is, however, not the only possible explanation. Careful semantic analysis can reveal that seemingly unmotivated uses of a newly emerged item were fully licensed by its semantics which in turn was determined by the crucial contexts of change. Once again, such cases strongly suggest that speakers in the initial stages of change possess a fully speciWed new item in
Introduction
15
their lexicon rather than a vague scheme to experiment with. This view is speciWcally elaborated in Chapter 5 on the negation particles in Old French. We may assume that speakers use the words and phrases of their language with great precision and conWdence. The hypothesis I want to pursue here is that this precision not only holds for the stable parts of language. The emergence of new items is likewise, in large part, a well-deWned process with precise results.
1.4 Logical Semantics as a Tool of Investigation The present monograph undertakes the Wrst major attempt to approach these questions in terms of truth conditional semantics. I hope to demonstrate that an exploration of this so far neglected combination of tool and topic shows promising results. We can gain a better understanding of many particular facts and case studies in meaning change under reanalysis, as well as the process in general, as soon as we investigate meaning change in reanalysis with the tools of truth conditional semantics. This may be surprising, because logical semantics in the tradition of Montague (1974) is usually dismissed as completely unsuited for the investigation of diachronic semantics (see e.g. the viewpoints put forward in Geeraerts 1997, Sweetser 1999, Langacker 1990). In fact, the development of cognitive semantic approaches was in part inspired by phenomena in language change that had never found a satisfying treatment in truth conditional approaches, particularly metaphorical, metonymical, and prototype-based meaning shifts. Nevertheless, formal semantics can oVer insights about language interpretation that are crucial in elucidating meaning change under reanalysis. What aspects have to be covered by a framework to investigate semantic change under reanalysis? . First and foremost, we need an explicit and detailed representation of the processes that go on at the syntax–semantics interface, and of the steps of semantic composition. In reanalysis, structural changes and meaning changes need to be synchronized, and we therefore should use a theoretical framework that allows us to mirror the syntax–semantics isomorphism with great detail. . Second, we need a semantic representation format that covers semantic items of all kinds. A framework that can capture content words in a very detailed manner but has to remain tacit about the meaning contribution of functional elements will have the inconvenient consequence that
16
Introduction certain language changes, in particular in grammaticalization, lead straight out of the paradigm. . Generally, we need a format of semantic representation that allows us to capture the meaning of the new word at the same level of Wnegrainedness at which real speakers operate. All case studies in this book demonstrate over and again that the intricate patterns that guide speakers’ use of newly arising items cannot be explained on the basis of simple innovation and imitation. We will see many points at which speakers agreed on very striking grammatical facts about some new item. How many of these striking facts are really just historical accidents? How can accidental facts spread over an entire language community and become part of the common grammar? A closer look into the contexts of change will reveal that many apparently accidental peculiarities in the data are in fact coherent and correct uses of the newly emerging items that are fully determined by the initial contexts of change.
My investigations are conducted within the framework of type logical semantics in the tradition of Montague (1974). The original approach was reWned and extended to cover indexicality, discourse phenomena, focusing eVects, the pragmatics of presupposition, and default inferencing. While even the Wrst versions were carefully designed in order to represent and study the nature of semantic composition, the Weld has reached maturity and sophistication in the coverage of both data and phenomena over the last decades. Time seems hence ripe to test the potential of the approach against highly demanding cases such as those posed by diachronic linguistics. A more detailed overview of the relevant parts of truth value based semantic theory will be given in Chapter 3. Truth conditional semantics oVers a uniform and coherent way to represent meanings of words of all grammatical categories, ranging from content words to the most abstract grammatical notions. Therefore, we will not be in danger of leaping beyond the paradigm, no matter where grammaticalization carries us.5 Formal semantics allows an explicit representation of the combination of semantic units into larger semantic objects, covering the whole way from word to sentence meanings. Therefore we can explicitly talk not only about word meanings and sentence meanings and how the former combine to yield the latter. We can moreover consider questions like ‘what piece of meaning would be necessary to compose some target proposition out of the semantic 5
An evident exception to this statement would be the sporadic cases where an item develops into a purely formal element. I subscribe to the position taken by von Fintel (1995) with respect to this question.
Introduction
17
objects given so far?’ and see whether this required piece of meaning can be sensibly linked with given words, phrases, or constructions. Formal semantic analysis of words and phrases will not only capture their meaning contributions, it can frequently oVer an explanation of aspects of their grammatical behaviour. This is witnessed by a wealth of current research in synchronic formal semantics and at the syntax–semantics interface, and it will also be exploited in the diachronic studies in this book. Finally, formal semantics operates on the basis of an all-purpose framework of information representation. This allows us to investigate sentence contents, presuppositions, implications, and implicatures in a uniform manner, which is particularly convenient once we want to trace the reanalysis of an implied proposition into an asserted proposition: we can represent sentence meanings and other pieces of information in one framework without further transitions. In summary, using formal semantics to represent meaning change in reanalysis seems promising. The aim of this monograph is to oVer a Wrst probe of the fruitfulness of a formal perspective on changes at the syntax– semantics interface.6
1.5 The Plan of the Book One of the challenges of writing on a topic which combines two diVerent Welds of linguistic research lies in the fact that those working in either Weld might not be very well acquainted with the methods and results of the other. This monograph addresses readers with a background in historical linguistics as well as those with a background in formal semantics. The next two chapters will serve to recapitulate some necessary prerequisites of either Weld that should facilitate access to the core part of the book. Chapter 2 provides an overview of recent research in grammaticalization and reanalysis. We will evidently be mostly interested in the semantic side of these processes, and my survey will therefore concentrate on approaches to meaning change in grammaticalization, leaving aside other topics in the Weld (as for instance the issue of unidirectionality, or morphophonological reduction). I will review some major proposals about the nature of meaning change in reanalysis like Heine’s metaphor-based approach, the metonymy hypothesis of Hopper and Traugott, the classical explanation of meaning change by bleaching, and a striking proposal made by Haspelmath that meaning does not change at all in reanalysis. I will take the assumptions of 6
Eckardt (2003b) oVers a Wrst brief e´tude in this direction.
18
Introduction
historical pragmatics as my starting point as they have been laid out in Traugott and Dasher (2002) and will Wnally report on some recent proposals about the nature of the contexts of change (Diewald 2002, Heine 2002). In Chapter 3, I will give a brief introduction into the main assumptions, techniques, and notations of formal semantics. This overview cannot replace a full introduction to the framework but I hope that it can revive previous encounters with semantic theory and provide some working ability in reading the formal representations that will be used in later chapters. In addition to this general introduction, each of the case studies in Chapters 4 to 7 will recapitulate those results of semantic research that are put into action in the respective case. Furthermore, an appendix with some core deWnitions in formal logic should help to minimize the need to consult additional textbooks. Given that historical semanticists sometimes view truth conditional semantics with a just portion of scepticism, particular emphasis is laid on motivating the more controversial assumptions of the approach. I hope that an explicit discussion of the aims and limits of the framework may facilitate access to formal semantics as a convenient tool of investigation rather than a Weltanschauung. Chapters 4 to 7 constitute the main body of the work. Each chapter is devoted to a case study in meaning change under reanalysis. After reviewing the data and pointing out surprising aspects in the source material, each chapter will provide further pieces of semantic theory as required by the case, propose an analysis of the development in terms of formal semantics, and Wnally highlight how the treatment can explain the peculiar facts that were pointed out earlier. Chapter 4 addresses a classical case of grammaticalization, the development of the going to future in English. I will contribute to the literature on this topic in two respects. On the empirical side, the existing evaluation of corpora with respect to futurate uses at the crucial period (around 1600), basically the Helsinki and OED Drama Corpus (see Danchev and Kyto¨ 1994), will be complemented by the evaluation of Chadwyck’s Early English Prose Fiction, the Stanford Library Drama Corpus, and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEECS).7 The Wndings allow some interesting hypotheses about the crucial contexts of emergence of the going to future which, although in need of further consolidation, can add to our understanding of this development. On the side of semantic analysis, the investigation of going to is particularly rewarding because the construction aVects the sophisticated mechanisms of 7 I am extremely grateful to those persons who made these corpora accessible to me, notably Elizabeth C. Traugott and Aditi Lahiri.
Introduction
19
temporal and aspectual anchoring of sentence content. Not only will we learn more about what distinguishes an implication (¼ inferred information) from literal content (¼ literally conveyed information). A Wne-grained semantic analysis of the change allows us to understand some of the more intricate facts about going to like its centredness to the present, and the empirical consequences thereof. Chapter 5 investigates the development of negation particles like pas, point, or mie in Old French. The main line of the development has been well known since Jespersen (1917). Yet little attention has been paid to the fact that all negation particles show the same type of ‘puzzling’ uses in Old French texts: uses that are neither licensed by the older noun meaning of the respective words (pas ¼ ‘step’, point ¼ ‘point’, etc.) nor by their newly acquired function as emphatic negators. Previous authors tended to ignore or present them as accidental stray cases, even though we should wonder why they occur with great regularity for all negation particles in French. A careful semantic analysis of the pathway of change that leads from nouns that denote a minimal entity via a so-called ‘negative polarity item’ to a part of negation will reveal that the seemingly unmotivated occurrences in fact are a regular part of the negative polarity stage of these words. Rather than being puzzling, they witness the great systematicity with which speakers make use of language at all stages. Chapter 6 treats the development of German selbst from intensiWer ( N-self in English) to a focus particle reading ( ‘even’). Previous authors suggested that the word remains practically the same focus sensitive particle, diVering only minimally in the formal and pragmatic conventions that guide its use. This position however turns out to be problematic upon closer inspection: older and newer item diVer in at least six respects which all change in one step, i.e. without any intermediate variation or gradual losses and gains. A detailed formal semantic representation of the two items reveals that they in fact do not mean the same at all. In the contexts of change, selbstsentences were cleanly restructured on the syntactic (and prosodic) side and we will see how this restructuring allows the hearer/speaker to deduce the new meaning for selbst with great precision. An evaluation of the Gutenberg corpus allows a hypothesis about the contexts of change. I propose that reanalysis occurred in order to avoid pragmatic overload. While the over-eager use of selbst was visibly driven by literary fashion, its reinterpretation was hence a sober attempt of readers to Wnd a plausible interpretation for the respective sentences.8 8 This Wnding conforms nicely with the characterization of the contexts of change that has been proposed in Diewald (2002) for German modals.
20
Introduction
Chapter 7 is devoted to the development of the adjective lauter (‘pure’) into a determiner-like element that means something like ‘many’/‘only’. I will start with a review of the facts about modern lauter, which has not been studied so far. I point out several peculiar aspects, one of which is the prohibition on using lauter in a type of stranding construction in which other, similar determiners in German can be used straightforwardly. This prohibition is particularly striking because it can hardly be learned by imitation (other new determiners enter the construction easily) and yet has been maintained for over 450 years. I propose that the development of lauter was shaped by independent semantic universals. They forced the item to stop at an ambivalent stage between adjective and determiner. While the semantic nature of the modern word can best be understood by taking its origin into account, the results of semantic theorizing can help us to understand why this development took place in the surprising way it did. The reanalysis and reinterpretation of lauter took its start under circumstances that are comparable to the selbst case. An overview of the data in the crucial period (between 1500 and 1600) reveals that the determiner-like use developed as a kind of interpolation between two previous readings of lauter, an adjective of quality meaning ‘pure’, and a scalar adjective in the sense ‘a mere N’. The origin of the new item can be traced down to contexts where speakers used lauter in a way that charged too much pragmatic accommodation from the listener. Hence, the principle of avoiding pragmatic overload can be witnessed once again. Chapter 8 summarizes the results of the preceding chapters. In particular, the preceding case studies will be evaluated with respect to three questions: . What are the characteristics of utterance situations in which reanalysis and semantic change get initiated? . How do speakers break apart a sentence meaning into word meanings and derive new meanings for some parts of the reanalysed sentence? . How well deWned, speciWc, and detailed are the results of this kind of inference? In survey, the Wne-grained semantic analyses that are applied throughout this work reveal languages to be tightly woven, reliable systems of communication. Flexible parts and rigid structure are combined in a way that ensures both the precise transfer of meaning as well as adaptations to new communicative needs. The system reXects the great analytical power of the human mind, and we will see how generations of speakers ingeniously exploited its potential for both pertinacy and change.
Introduction
21
I will Wnally attempt an independent characterization of the process under scrutiny. I propose that central features of the changes as we see them in this monograph apply likewise to instances of meaning change without concomitant structural reorganization. An independent notion of semantic reanalysis emerges, emancipating this kind of semantic change from any speciWc processes at the surface level—be it reanalysis, be it grammaticalization, de-grammaticalization, or any other shifts. The full potential and limits of this notion remain to be explored.
2 Meaning Change under Reanalysis: Previous Views 2.1 Reanalysis versus Grammaticalization Meaning change under reanalysis is closely tied to grammaticalization, another mode of language change that has received much attention in recent years. After a meticulous survey of deWnitions of ‘grammaticalization’ that scholars in the Weld advanced over the last century, Lyle Campbell and Richard Janda (2001: 114) summarize ‘the prototypic (or core) deWnition most familiar today: some linguistic element > more grammatical’. While even a brief survey of sample cases shows that reanalysis and grammaticalization are not identical concepts, the notions show large overlap. Hopper and Traugott (1993: 32) state that ‘unquestionably, reanalysis is the most important mechanism for grammaticalization, as for all change’, and generally, reanalysis is viewed as a major process in grammaticalization. The reason why any investigation of meaning change under reanalysis will have to take the literature on grammaticalization as one of its starting points is of a practical nature: reanalysis is virtually always, in practice, investigated as it operates in grammaticalization. While the process was early on perceived as a mode of change in its own right (Langacker 1977), a position that remained unchallenged over the last decades,1 it inspired scholarly interest mostly in the context of grammaticalization. Consequently, many proposals as to the possible modes of meaning change under reanalysis were made with respect to the more limited Weld of grammaticalization data. I will therefore take the time to summarize some of the main claims, assumptions, and keywords in grammaticalization and point the reader towards more comprehensive overviews of the Weld in its current state. Not
1 Exceptions granted, see Heine and Reh (1984: 95): ‘Reanalysis thus appears as a concept which is largely synonymous with our term ‘‘grammaticalization’’.’
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
23
only do the relevant keywords occur over and over again in the referenced literature. The perspective advanced in this book can also shed new light on some issues that are hotly debated in grammaticalization literature. The chapter is organized as follows: After a brief overview of grammaticalization in the present section, sections 2.2 to 2.4 will be devoted to three major approaches to ‘meaning change in grammaticalization’ (which, remember, overlaps but is not necessarily coextensional with ‘meaning change under reanalysis’ as it is investigated in the present monograph). These are the bleaching approach, the metaphor based approach, and the metonymy based approach. Of course, this categorical division of the Weld into three separate branches is an oversimpliWcation, and areas of overlap and contact will be pointed out in passing. Section 2.4 in particular will address the interrelations between the concepts metaphor, metonymy, and historical pragmatics. Section 2.5 will take a closer look into the development of textual and discourse markers and spell out in what respects these pattern well with grammaticalization and where they do not. In section 2.6 I will review some recent proposals about the nature of the contexts of change. Section 2.7 Wnally will spell out in some more detail how far meaning change under reanalysis and meaning change in grammaticalization are orthogonal to each other, and I will point out some possible consequences. The term ‘grammaticalization’ goes back to Antoine Meillet (1912) while the phenomenon was studied long before by Wilhelm von Humboldt, Georg von der Gabelentz, and even earlier by the French scholar E´tienne Bonuot de Condillac, or the English John Horne Tooke.2 Detailed accounts of the development of the Weld over the last three centuries can be found in Lehmann (1982: ch. 1) as well as Hopper and Traugott (1993: ch. 2), leading the reader past a line of authors who laid the grounds for current research. Campbell and Janda (2001: s. 2) oVer the most detailed summary of deWnitions for ‘grammaticalization’ since Meillet’s famous starting point. They characterize the topic of investigation in grammaticalization research as developments that lead from some linguistic element to something more grammatical. The nature of this trend becomes immediately clear once we are presented with typical examples like the following: English will ‘want’ developed an auxiliary use will ‘future’ in which it has a grammatically more speciWc, more bounded function and has also suVered from phonetic erosion (I’ll, you’ll, etc.) Germanic thaz/that as a deictic element developed a complementizer use (daß, that) in which it serves to mark a subordinate clause. In Latin, the collocation verb + habere turned into an analytic future construction. 2
Quoted after Lehmann (1982 [1995]: ch. 1).
24
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
Phonetic reduction in French led to a synthetic future tense paradigm that integrates the descendant of a lexical verb as a suYx into the inXected verb, thereby turning syntax into morphology. And so on. What are the factors that tie all these cases together? In his classic Thoughts on Grammaticalization, Christian Lehmann oVered a detailed proposal to deWne the Weld of grammaticalization and posited some prominent generalizations (Lehmann 1982 [1995]). Later research has mostly taken Lehmann’s picture more or less as a starting point, and I will therefore give a summary of his six ‘parameters of grammaticalization’. Lehmann’s book was followed by the rich and diVerentiated monograph by Paul Hopper and Elizabeth C. Traugott (Hopper and Traugott 1993). The overview of Fischer, Rosenbach, and Stein (2000) oVers a more recent update which, basically taking over the large picture drawn in the two earlier books, adds some reWnements and reports the state of discussion with respect to more controversial issues that have come up in the last years. Heine and Kuteva’s (2002) world lexicon of grammaticalization comprises an impressive range of case studies and grammaticalization trends. The papers in Campbell and Janda (2001) address the soundness of the terminological underpinnings of the Weld in a particularly well-balanced and illuminating way, carefully teasing apart theoretical assumptions and empirical Wndings and disentangling some seemingly controversial issues. Traugott and Dasher (2002) Wnally also endorse an overview of the Weld while the authors, being concerned with ‘regularity in semantic change’, in fact address a broader range of phenomena. Grammaticalization, to put it intuitively, takes place if an item starts to get used in a way that is more bound, more functional, less independent, less contentful. From a certain point on, one will want to postulate a new item (with new grammatical properties, new meaning) that has developed from the older one. We have then reached a stage of polysemy (or layering in terms of Hopper 1991: 22). The older item can brieXy be dubbed as ‘more lexical’, the newer item as ‘more grammatical’. Thinking in terms of grammatical categories, it was found that the various stages of items frequently pass through the same sequences of grammatical categories. For instance, the following pathway of subsequent stages was posited for grammaticalizations of verbs: Full verb > (Vector verb) > auxiliary > clitic > affix (Hopper and Traugott 1993: 108). Such pathways are also called clines. While the development of some actual item may not pass the full cline, or leave out certain stages, these clines do reXect universal tendencies: if an item grammaticalizes into a new item, the new item is commonly located to the right of the
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
25
older item on the respective cline. (See Hopper and Traugott 1993: chs. 1.1.2 and 5.) Can we characterize the tendency from ‘less grammatical’ to ‘more grammatical’ in general, beyond a mere listing of attested clines? Hopper and Traugott (1993) propose the following general scheme of grammaticalization clines, pointing out that the spellout of any actual cline has to remain a caseby-case task. Content item > Grammatical word > clitic > Inflectional affix > (zero) (Hopper and Traugott 1993: 8)
Lehmann (1982 [1995]: ch. 4) however explicates the trend from ‘less grammatical’ to ‘more grammatical’ in terms of more speciWc, more graspable properties of linguistic items. He oVers a system of three parameters of grammaticalization, each being realized in two dimensions, a syntagmatic and a paradigmatic dimension. The following table of criteria shown in Table 1 emerge (Lehmann 1982 [1995]: T4): Grammaticalization, according to Lehmann, is characterized by an increase in cohesion along with a decrease in weight and variability from older item to newer item. The system is to be read as a cluster of correlated features rather than a list of necessary and suYcient criteria for grammaticalization. This means that we may encounter cases of grammaticalization that show most, but not all of the listed tendencies. Let me brieXy spell out the keywords given in the table, while I refer the reader to the original work for a fuller discussion of the six criteria. The paradigmatic weight of a sign, or its integrity, measures its distinctness and independence of other signs in terms of both phonology and semantics. Hence both phonological reductions and semantic losses constitute a loss in integrity. The paradigmaticity of a sign reXects the degree to which it functions as part of a paradigm of signs of complementary distribution in certain contexts. Grammaticalization frequently involves a trend for an item to turn Table 1
weight cohesion variability
paradigmatic
syntagmatic
integrity paradigmaticity paradigmatic variability
structural scope bondedness syntagmatic variability
26
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
into part of a paradigm of Wxed semantic and structural function. Paradigmatic variability, Wnally, concerns the question whether an item can be freely replaced by other signs of the same paradigm, or be left out altogether. A loss in paradigmatic variability means that the item becomes obligatory in certain contexts. The syntagmatic weight of a sign, according to Lehmann, is its structural scope. This notion is spelled out as either semantic scope or syntactic scope in diVerent examples; Tabor and Traugott (1998) attempt to develop a formal version of this criterion. Syntagmatic bondedness measures the degree to which an item is dependent on the presence of other signs, or attaches to them in a morphophonologically signiWcant manner. Syntagmatic variability, Wnally, reXects the degree to which an item has to hold a Wxed position or shows freer word order. Lehmann illustrates each of these criteria with traditional instances of grammaticalization and demonstrates that, even though many cases lack some of these criteria, every one of them reXects an important intuition that has led scholars to class one or the other case of language change as grammaticalization. More importantly, the system was developed against a background of a large number of both case studies and less comprehensive typologies of grammaticalization and to date is viewed as the most elaborated catalogue of criteria available. While Lehmann’s two-dimensional parameter system captures all positive instances of grammaticalization, later sections on discourse markers (see section 2.6) allow us to get a feeling for its limits. Let me come back to the above observation that grammaticalization clines reXect universal trends of language change, even if they do not reXect compulsory ‘road maps’ of change. A vast number of case studies have conWrmed over and again that diachronic developments very frequently lead from the more lexical to the more grammatical, from the less bounded to the more bounded, from the less functional to the more functional, or on the cline from left to right. This observation naturally leads to the claim that whenever an item develops a new reading that can be located on any such axis at all, it will necessarily lead from the lexical pole towards the grammatical pole (the unidirectionality hypothesis). The status of this Wnding is an issue of heated debate. While all scholars agree that it holds true as a statistical tendency, opinions diVer as to whether this tendency should be viewed as a law of grammaticalization. Search for counterexamples has yielded an impressive range of changes that contradict the unidirectionality hypothesis (see the surveys in Campbell 2001: 127 f. and Janda 2001: 289 V. who lists more than seventy critical examples) and which have elicited mixed responses in the literature. In particular, authors tend to acknowledge the existence of counterexamples but go
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
27
on to use ‘grammaticalizaion’, in word or in spirit, as if unidirectionality were nevertheless a 100 percent reliable feature. Campbell (2001) shows carefully how the net result of this strategy—which he diagnoses for several authors in the Weld, for instance Lehmann, Hopper and Traugott, Heine, Haspelmath, Tabor and Traugott—turns unidirectionality into a deWning criterion of ‘grammaticalization’ rather than an empirical generalization. At what point does reanalysis enter into the grammaticalization literature? Generally, it is acknowledged as one of the major processes in grammaticalization (see Hopper and Traugott 1993: ch. 3, Harris and Campbell 1995, Fischer, Rosenbach, and Stein 2000, Campbell 2001, among others3). Traugott and Dasher write, ‘for most of this century, reanalysis has been considered the major factor in morphosyntactic change’ (2002: 27), thus echoing the earlier statement in Hopper and Traugott (1993: 50): ‘It is best, then, to regard grammaticalization as a subset of changes involved in reanalysis, rather than to identify the two.’ This more speciWc view on the relation between the two processes leads to three caveats that should be kept in mind when evaluating the literature on grammaticalization with respect to statements about ‘meaning change under reanalysis’: (a) Not all reanalysis in grammaticalization is necessarily of a kind that is of interest for us. Consider, for instance, the morphosyntactic reanalysis in Early French future constructions that turned the auxiliary habere into an inXectional suYx of the verb -ai, -ais, -a, etc. In spite of the structural reanalysis of the sequence verb + aux into verb + suffix, the meaning of the construction remained unchanged. We will not be concerned here with reanalysis that only aVects morphosyntactic form. (b) Not all changes in grammaticalization need to involve reanalysis. In spite of the general agreement that reanalysis is a major force in grammaticalization, other mechanisms have been proposed as well, for instance analogy/extension and borrowing as a further source of new grammatical items (Campbell 2001: 141). (c) Not all cases where language changes occur on the basis of reanalysis need be cases of grammaticalization. This point echoes Hopper and Traugott’s position quoted above. Apart from isolated examples, discourse markers and their emergence oVer rich material. Their problematic status with respect to grammaticalization will be taken up in section 2.5. 3 Haspelmath (1998) oVers a provoking antithesis to this general assumption: ‘Does grammaticalization need reanalysis?’ Haspelmath’s claim however rests crucially on an idiosyncratic use of core notions like ‘reanalysis’ and ‘grammatical structure’; the critical review of Haspelmath (1998, 1999) in Campbell (2001) will certainly come as an intellectual relief at least for some puzzled readers.
28
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
Three modes of meaning change in grammaticalization were pointed out as particularly relevant: bleaching, metaphor, and metonymy. They will be discussed in more detail in the following three subsections. Research in grammaticalization at its revival around 1970 was not committed to any particular theoretical paradigm in linguistics. As more and more individual case studies emerged and general tendencies and mechanisms suggested themselves, two major lines of combining diachronic and synchronic linguistics emerged. On one side, language change in general and grammaticalization in particular was adopted as one central argument in advancing conceptual approaches to grammar and meaning against the formal paradigms in syntax and semantics that are connected with the names of Noam Chomsky and Richard Montague. I will however largely ignore this challenging Weld in favour of a second line along which a synthesis has been proposed: In the recent decade, we have also seen an increasing interest in reconciling the results of grammaticalization theory with formal theories of linguistic research. SpeciWcally, work by Gelderen (1993, 2004), Roberts (1993a, 1993b), Roberts and Roussou (2003), or Faarlund (1990) shows large-scale attempts to elucidate the syntactic side of grammaticalization in terms of formal syntactic theory in the Chomskian tradition. This work has, however, so far not been complemented by truth value based investigations in to meaning change.4 Attempts to capture the dynamics of language change with formal theories have received sceptical comments in the past. Fischer, Rosenbach, and Stein (2000: 13) lay out two competing positions under the headings of ‘formal’ versus ‘functional’ approaches and point out aspects that seem to prove the unsuitedness of formal approaches for gradual processes of change (see Fischer, Rosenbach, and Stein 2000: 13, table 4). Functional approaches are characterized as resting on a holistic conception of language and grammar, considering conceptual, semantic-pragmatic, and language external factors, perceiving diachrony in synchrony, as localizing language change mainly in language use, perceiving language change as gradual, as seeing grammaticalization as the full process from lexical items to grammatical words, including actuation (see below), implementation, and motivation, as oVering a description of the whole process, and as looking for explanations inside and outside grammar. Formal approaches, according to Fischer et al., show the following characteristics: they have a modular conception of language and grammar, consider only language internal factors, oppose synchrony to diachrony, 4 Webelhuth (1999) however made an interesting proposal to analyse the development of the German werden passive in an HPSG framework.
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
29
which is viewed as a comparison of synchronic stages. Their subject matter of investigation is linguistic competence (as opposed to language use), and language change is localized in language acquisition. Grammaticalization is reduced to reanalysis, and seen as the evolution of functional heads out of lexical heads. Only the situation before and after reanalysis is described, and Wnally, only language internal causes are taken into consideration in explaining language change. The present view, even though it might at Wrst sight be classed under Fischer et al.’s header ‘formal approaches’, demonstrates that approaches to grammaticalization do not always follow the neat two-way classiWcation suggested by these authors.5 In particular, the present study shares several important features with their ‘functional’ approaches: it aims to tie the onset contexts of reanalysis to pragmatic and language external factors and to explain how these can instigate reanalysis. Consequently, the role of language acquisition in language change is downtuned in comparison to communicative experiences of the adult speaker. Explicating the very process of reanalysis, we will describe the process of change as well as pre-state and post-state, and explanations for change are sought in the communicative situation rather than ‘inside grammar’. Fischer et al. attribute all these features to the so-called ‘functional approaches’. Nevertheless, my approach likewise shares several important features with the ‘formal approaches’. Most importantly, I will make the assumption that a synchronic language stage can be characterized in a reliable and precise way and that the precise description of language stages before and after change is an indispensable precondition for any analysis of language change. It is in line with this assumption that I will concentrate on reanalysis as a mode of language change, another aspect that Fischer et al. would attribute to ‘formal’ approaches. This defence of a formal approach to meaning change against the atmospheric criticisms that are implicit in two-way classiWcations like the one by Fischer et al. must necessarily remain vague until brought to life by the contents of later chapters. Eventually I will have to leave it to the reader to decide where the present work should most appropriately be located on the landscape of investigation into language change. Theoretical characterizations of a Weld of research are one thing—the range of actual research conducted in the Weld may sometimes draw a slightly diVerent picture. The following collections oVer a good overview of the developments in the Weld over the last years: Heine, Claudi, and Hu¨nnemeyer (1991), Traugott 5 Two-way classiWcations notoriously bear the implicit suggestion that the values ‘good’ and ‘bad’ should also be attributed to the two classes.
30
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
and Heine (1991), Pagliuca (1994), Harris and Campbell (1995), Giacalone Ramat and Hopper (1998), Fischer, Rosenbach, and Stein (2000), Campbell and Janda (2001), Wischer and Diewald (2002), Heine and Kuteva (2002), Lang and Neumann-Holzschuh (1999), and Batllori et al. (2005). The state of the Weld in the early 1990s is moreover mirrored in the Dictionary of Grammaticalization by Donald A. Lessau (Lessau 1994).
2.2 Meaning Change by ‘Bleaching’ The earliest attempt to characterize meaning change in grammaticalization is based on the metaphor of meaning ‘fading away’, ‘weakening’, or ‘bleaching’ in grammaticalization. This reXects the intuition that the meanings of content words are usually more concrete, more graspable, more precise, more often linked to real things, properties, or activities than the meanings of the respective derived function words. The following passage of Georg von der Gabelentz is frequently quoted as an early manifestation of the bleaching theory (Gabelentz 1901: 241): Was erst neu und selten war, wird dann allta¨glich und damit verliert es an Kraft, verblasst, ru¨ckt schliesslich wohl gar in die Reihe jener abstracten Bestandtheile der Rede, die es hatte verbessernd und versta¨rkend erga¨nzen sollen . . . Was von den Formwo¨rtern gilt, das gilt . . . auch von den Wortformen. Wo deren neue geschaVen wurden, da waren sie periphrastisch . . . , frischere neue Farben deckten die verblichenen alten.6
About twenty years later, Antoine Meillet (1912) wrote, ‘L’aVaiblissement du sens et l’aVaiblissement de la forme des mots accessoires vont de par; quand l’un et l’autre sont assez avance´s, le mot accessoire peut Wnir par ne plus eˆtre qu’un e´le´ment prive´ de sens propre.’7 Note that the bleaching metaphor is particularly convincing (but also slippery) because it can be read in two diVerent ways, and seems to reXect a fact about language change under both interpretations. Under one interpretation, it concerns the stylistic value of expressions. A newly coined expression will still carry the Xavour of originality and strikingness. As soon as it is used repeatedly and imitated by 6 ‘What Wrst was new and striking will soon become common, and it thereby loses strength, bleaches, and eventually turns into one of those abstract parts of speech which it initially was coined to improve and complement as a stronger expression. . . . What is true of functional words is likewise true of word forms. Wherever new ones were coined, they were periphrastic . . . fresher, newer colours covered the old, bleached ones.’ 7 ‘The weakening of meaning, and the weakening of the surface form of the respective word, go hand in hand; once one and the other have advanced far enough, the word in question can end as being nothing more than an item deprived of any real content.’
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more speakers in more contexts, this originality and strikingness will of course get lost, or ‘fade away’, and leave the expression as a neutral part of language. I suspect that at least von der Gabelentz’s remark was primarily meant in this sense. According to this view, bleaching would take place when a formerly new grammatical construction gets used more and more and becomes a regular part of language. The order of events is hence: Wrst change (¼ innovation), followed by later fading which in turn invites further innovation. According to another interpretation of the bleaching metaphor, however, bleaching takes place at the very moment when a new expression or grammatical construction is coined. Assume that an older content word undergoes grammaticalization. In terms of syntax, it becomes more bound, more functional, more obligatory—in terms of semantics, the older, more concrete meaning bleaches to yield the newer, more abstract meaning. The order of events here is diVerent: change is fading. Taking up current practice, I will only address this second notion of bleaching. At the end of this section we will, however, remain with the result that the notion of ‘bleaching’ is surprisingly tenacious even though it was often criticized as empirically inadequate and theoretically ungraspable. The two-facedness of the bleaching metaphor may be one reason for its lasting appeal. Can bleaching (henceforth in the second sense) be spelled out more explicitly? The Wrst and simplest idea might be to view bleaching as meaning generalization. The less restrictive the contents of a word, the larger will become its range of application. DiVerent uses of the German heben (full verb)/haben (cognate auxiliary) that range from grasping over concrete to abstract possession can serve as an illustration. (2.1) grasp
Er hebt einen Stock (South Germ.) possess Er hat ein Auto abstr. poss. Er hat einen Schnupfen ? Er hat Recht ? Er hat gelacht
‘he has/holds a stick’ ‘he has/owns a car’ ‘he has a cold’ ‘he is right’ ‘he has laughed’
This view can at least be traced back to Hermann Paul (1880) who described cases of grammaticalization in this spirit, characterizing the concurrent meaning change as generalization. Lessau (1994) attributes the introduction of the modern term bleaching to Heine, Claudi, and Hu¨nnemeyer (1991: 40) while the notion itself was already discussed in Lehmann (1982 [1995]: 127). Many instances of grammaticalization, however, do not exhibit meaning generalization. Remember the say-do future tenses that were discussed in Chapter 1: we would hesitate to claim that the concept of saying generalizes
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Meaning Change under Reanalysis
to do-in-future. Clearly, ‘saying’ is not just a more speciWc variant of ‘intending to do in the future’ because a person can say a lot of things without any intentions for future action. A similar case was already made in Traugott (1988) and Sweetser (1988) who both point out that an item under grammaticalization may gain meaning (¼ become more speciWc in certain respects) as well as lose meaning (¼ become less speciWc in other respects). Gains in meaning have since been acknowledged as an integral part of meaning change in grammaticalization under the label of pragmatic strengthening (e.g. Traugott and Ko¨nig 1991: 194, corresponding to the I-principle, Levinson 2000, and also section 2.4 below). Among the cases discussed in the present volume, the history of selbst oVers another striking example for grammaticalization/reanalysis without semantic generalization. A slightly diVerent view of bleaching is endorsed in the work of E. Sapir (1921: ch. V) and was taken up later by Zirmunskij (1966: 83, from Lehmann 1982[1995]: 127 V., 156). They propose that grammaticalization leads from lexically meaningful, presentational absolute meanings to more abstract, relational meanings. Lehmann critically observes that the relationality of a word usually remains unchanged during grammaticalization. Words that denote concrete relations develop into words for abstract relations without change in arity. Thinking about changes in relationality during grammaticalization, we may note that neither of two possible extreme positions seems to reXect the full truth. Neither does a word at diVerent stages of the grammaticalization cline generally amass more and more argument places that need to be Wlled (i.e. get more and more relational), nor does the argumental structure of an item generally remain unaVected during grammaticalization, as Lehmann seems to suggest. Consider once again the emergence of the have + participle construction. Evidently, have must undergo reorganization in argument structure in order to develop from the simple binary possesion verb to part of the complex tense construction. If we follow Musan (2001), haveaux is analysed as a functor that takes a verbal predicate and turns it into a more complex predicate that includes aspectual information. Hence, the word turns from a binary relation into a functor, which means a considerable reorganization. It is undeniable that the bleaching metaphor, the tendency from the more concrete to more abstract meaning, oVers an adequate descriptive characterization of meaning change under reanalysis. Yet it seems highly problematic to turn the descriptive term into a label for ‘meaning change under grammaticalization’ (or ‘meaning change under reanalysis’). The hypothetical postulate that
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
33
‘meaning change in grammaticalization always and only occurs by bleaching’ will leave several questions unanswered. First, it remains open whether this mysterious process of semantic bleaching can ever occur elsewhere in meaning change. We have already argued that bleaching is not the same as semantic generalization. In the next section, we will review metaphorization as another mode of meaning change that commonly leads from more concrete to more abstract meanings. Even though metaphorization would Wt nicely with the descriptive term ‘bleaching’ in that respect, it will become clear that not all meaning change under reanalysis occurs by metaphoric shift. Under the rigid view of bleaching endorsed in the above postulate, hence, bleaching cannot be the same as metaphorization. This will lead to the consequence that the mysterious bleaching processes can always and only be observed as a semantic change in grammaticalization. This consequence, however, conXicts severely with current views on grammaticalization: there is strong evidence in favour of the assumption that grammaticalization is an epiphenomenon of interactions of phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes that are generally operant in language change. Arguments in favour of this view—as opposed to regarding grammaticalization as an independent mode of language change that cannot be decomposed—have been advanced by Campbell (2001), Joseph (2001), and Newmeyer (2001). According to this ‘conspiracy’ picture, languages come with an inventory of modes of sound change, morphological change, syntactic change, and— presumably—semantic change. An instance of language change is called ‘grammaticalization’ just if all the interacting changes on all levels produce a case of the appropriate phenotype. Against this background it would be highly surprising to claim that at the level of meaning alone, grammaticalization required a special process of ‘bleaching’ that was operant nowhere else. Second, even if we grant that meanings get ‘paler’ in grammaticalization (or reanalysis), the bleaching approach still remains tacit as to what actually drives the outcome of the fading process. Given that we know competing approaches that can successfully address this question and oVer meaningful answers (to which we will turn in section 2.4), this must be counted as a drawback of the bleaching approach. Finally, the mystery remains why meanings always seem to get paler in grammaticalization. There is certainly no general trend for meanings to get less speciWc or more abstract. We Wnd meaning specializations, as in E steorfan ‘die’ > starve (‘die from lack of food’), in G fasz (‘container’) > Faß (‘barrel’), or in G Kleid (‘clothing’) > Kleid (‘woman’s dress’). We also Wnd concretizations, as in G Bestellung (‘order’, as an activity) > Bestellung (‘the thing ordered’), or in Germ. Thing (‘lawsuit’) > E thing, G Ding. To put it
34
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
drastically: ‘Bleaching’ in meaning change is not as inevitable as ‘bleaching’ if you think about stockings in your washing machine. This fact is usually obscured by the force of the bleaching metaphor which seems to mirror some kind of intuition about grammaticalization. At the end of the book, I will come back to this puzzle. After evaluating the case studies in the core part, I will oVer a new attempt at explaining in what sense the denotations that emerge in grammaticalization are substantially diVerent from those that are attributed to words in other modes of establishing semantic conventions. In spite of the dubious theoretical status of the term, bleaching is still used as a pervasive descriptive label for meaning change in grammaticalization. This is witnessed by recent publications inside and in the periphery of the Weld, e.g. Haspelmath (1998: 318): ‘Grammaticalization comprises . . . the development of function words from content words, the development of aYxes from function words, as well as a large number of concomitant changes . . . (e.g. desemanticization, . . . )’, Musan (2001: 370): ‘The past participle hypothesis, however, only has to assume that haben and sein lost at least part of their original meaning by semantic bleaching, which is a general characteristic of grammaticalization in any case,’ or the article ‘How far does semantic bleaching go?’ by Werner Abraham in Faarlund (2001) (emphasis mine).
2.3 Meaning Change by Metaphor Meaning changes in grammaticalization share core properties with meaning shift by metaphor. A prosperous branch of research on grammaticalization, initiated by B. Heine and his colleagues, argue that meaning change in grammaticalization is metaphorical meaning shift (Heine 1993, 1997a, 1997b, Heine, Claudi, and Hu¨nnemeyer 1991, see also Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994, Sweetser 1988, 1990, Stolz 1994 for other proponents of this view). Heine observes that the same small range of content words tend to give rise to the same kinds of functional words in unrelated languages all over the world. Similar grammaticalization patterns arise independently at diVerent times and places, and conversely, the grammatical constructions of foreign languages, even though diVerent from those in our mother language, usually have a motivated Xavour about them once one has understood their etymological origin.8 Heine explains this by the fact that metaphors are based on universal human cognitive schemes and therefore universally accessible. 8 Campbell (2001) rightly points out that the danger of circular argument lurks behind this statement. In languages without written records, the search for etymological origins of a grammatical word is frequently driven by very concise expectations as to what the source item might mean. Such cases should, Campbell states, not be used as independent evidence in favour of a certain pathway of change.
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The metaphor account looks plausible in many cases. Take the French venir de faire (‘coming from doing’) immediate past tense as an example: (2.2) Je viens de Wnir l’essai sur grammaticalisation. I come from Wnishinf the paper on grammaticalization ‘I have just Wnished the paper on grammaticalization.’ Stolz (1994) proposes that this tense form involves a metaphoric shift from movement in space to movement in time. It might be interesting to note that Sweetser (1988) exploits the same metaphor to account for the English going to future. The mapping between ‘movement in space’ and ‘movement in time’ can, according to these proposals, be explored in various diVerent ways, a Wnding that coheres well with the general observation that metaphors are commonly based on structural similarities between diVerent ontological domains. These similarities can be exploited by more than one instance of metaphoric language use (LakoV and Johnson 1980). In spite of its plausibility, the approach does not automatically answer all questions. A Wrst important observation concerns the productivity of metaphor. Traditionally, metaphor has been viewed as a typical instance of creative language use. Metaphors are typically found in literary texts, particularly poetic texts, and are taken as an indication of the creativity of the author. Metaphors are a rhetorical device to present a given content in a striking, impressive, colourful way. Metaphors have also been found useful in scientiWc research, suggesting new conceptualizations of a given domain that may lead to new kinds of theories. Metaphors can Wnally be exploited in problem solving and engineering and lead to new solutions to a given technical problem (for a broad overview see Indurkhya 1992, Gentner 1983). Importantly, all these domains require the volitional, intentional use of metaphor as a mode of non-literal speaking. New grammatical constructions, in contrast, are never coined by volitional use of metaphor. Let me come back to the French venir de faire past in order to illustrate what this would amount to. Given that an English or German linguist can understand the construction as metaphor based, we would expect that they could in principle exploit the same metaphor in their own mother tongue. Yet, the following utterance is highly marked: (2.3) (Jo has been sitting at her desk since 8 a.m. At noon, her colleague enters the oYce. Jo looks up and says:) I am coming from Wnishing the paper on grammaticalization. I come from Wnishing the paper on grammaticalization.
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Meaning Change under Reanalysis
Such utterances would clearly not be understood (let alone praised) as creative use of language. The hearer might understand what Jo intends to say, but not on the basis of knowledge about movement in space and movement in time but at best on the basis of knowledge about some motivated immediate past tense in French that Jo evidently tries to calque into English. Likewise, such a scenario does not ‘feel’ like the initial point of grammaticalization under way.9 In answer to this observation, it was suggested that we need to distinguish between volitional and subconscious metaphorical shift (creative and emerging metaphor in terms of Heine, Claudi, and Hu¨nnemeyer 1991: 60–2). Metaphor in grammaticalization would then be subconscious metaphor, while in literary or scientiWc discourse, we meet volitional metaphors. This distinction, however, leads to an account of meaning change in reanalysis that is again descriptive rather than explanatory. Somewhat oversimplifying, we end with the following picture. Meaning change in grammaticalization is (sometimes, always) meaning shift by subconscious metaphor. While we know a lot about the licensing conditions for volitional metaphors, we do not know equally much about subconscious metaphor. In particular, we do not know when speakers can use subconscious metaphors. In constrast to classical metaphors, a mere similarity between some source and target domain is not suYcient to license emergent metaphor (see (2.3)).
Another drawback of the metaphor based approach to grammaticalization is that it will certainly require additional mechanisms of meaning change, in particular something like pragmatic strengthening, in order to account for the data (as acknowledged in Heine 1997a, or much earlier Sweetser 1988). Again, we can take the venir de faire past to illustrate the point. If we consider the purely spatial use of the verb venir (‘come’), it can easily be seen that it is not restricted (and never was) to short distance movements. We can use venir equally well to report that we ‘are coming from the bakery’ right now as to report that we ‘are coming from Texas’ when arriving at New York airport or even to inform the hearer about our place of birth (je viens de Bordeaux in the sense of ‘I was born in Bordeaux’). Hence, the use of venir de . . . in the source domain lacks the sense of immediacy that it carries in the target domain.
9 This is not as much an armchair insight as it may look at Wrst sight. We may faithfully assume that our current language is changing during our lifetime, as much as it did at any earlier time. Given this, we are certainly witness to some early stages of grammaticalization for some words, phrases, or constructions. Hence, it is telling that the scenario described in (2.3) does not constitute part of our own communicative experiences. We basically explore Labov’s (1972) universality hypothesis here; see section 2.6.
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One might object that the meanings of metaphoric uses of words are always coloured by facts about the target domain and in that sense can be more speciWc than the source domain would suggest. However, the venir de faire past tense again tells us that this cannot be the full truth. ‘Immediacy’ is not a given fact about events in the past, as little as it would be a fact about distances between locations. The metaphor ‘movement in space ¼ movement in time’ alone should perfectly well license a use of venir de faire like that in (2.4): (2.4) Je viens de faire mon Ph.D. a` Stuttgart (en 1996). intended sense: ‘I did my Ph.D. at Stuttgart (in 1996)’, or more poetically ‘In the journey of my life, I have also passed a station that was doing my Ph.D. at Stuttgart seven years ago’ (see LakoV and Johnson 1980: Life is a journey). Yet, the meaning of the grammaticalized venir de faire simply does not allow this use (i.e. sentence (2.4) is not acceptable French if I utter it today, in 2006). This illustrates the eVects of pragmatic strengthening. A Wnal objection against the metaphor based approach to meaning change under reanalysis is that we do Wnd a considerable number of instances of grammaticalization that are not plausibly metaphoric.10 Once more, the case of the Eastern Bantu say do future can serve to illustrate this claim: even though there is a clear practical link between announcing something and doing something in the future, this link is not a metaphorical one. Another striking example is posed by the development of the French complex ne pas negation which goes back to the transparent Latin non passum (¼ ‘no step’). This case will be taken up in Chapter 5, but even now we will be inclined to say that whatever the link from ‘step’ to negation may be, it is presumably not a metaphoric link. Surveys on grammaticalization commonly concentrate on motivated grammatical constructions, or even restrict attention exclusively to these (see e.g. Goossens 1989, Stolz 1994 on grammatical constructions that are metaphorically related to words for body parts). However, even paradigms with a majority of elements that might be explainable by subconscious metaphor can contain other elements for which the origin, whatever it may 10 In making this blunt statement, I subscribe to a notion of metaphor that rests on the intuitive plausibility of an intended match between source domain and target domain. While most theories of metaphor rightly assume that homomorphic source and target domains are one important precondition for metaphor, none could so far oVer a formal spellout of when the structural similarity may be explored by metaphor (e.g. Gentner 1983, Indurkhya 1992). The most striking evidence in favour of the claim that mere similarity is not enough is oVered by the well-known observation that metaphors are not symmetrical, even though ‘similarity’ is practically always presented as a symmetric relation. ‘Bad metaphors’ are another example to the same end (see Bartsch 2002). I feel therefore justiWed in taking ‘speakers’ intuition’ as a reputable empirical criterion to spot metaphors.
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be, does not look metaphoric. In a series of papers, Butt and Geuder address the light verb paradigm in Urdu (Butt and Geuder 2001, 2003). They report the surprising Urdu light verbs dee (‘give’) to contribute ‘forcefulness’ and lee (‘take’) to contribute ‘ability, habituality’ alongside the more metaphor-like maar (‘hit’) for ‘doing something energetically’, gaa (‘fall’) for ‘suddenly, involitionally’, or jaa (‘go’) for inceptive aspect. In conclusion, an account of meaning change in grammaticalization by metaphor does not cover the Weld in a satisfactory manner, even though it cannot be denied that many grammaticalizations carry a Xavour of metaphor. Most importantly, the metaphor based approach has little to say about the additional enhancing factors that are required to license subconscious metaphor. It is moreover not easy to reconcile the role of pragmatic strengthening with metaphor in an integral fashion.11 Finally, we do know of a considerable number of cases of grammaticalization which cannot be described as metaphor, however widely conceived. Importantly, many of these constructions are still motivated, which proves that motivated grammatical constructions can arise by cognitive processes other than metaphor. In the next section, I will discuss the proposal that meaning change under reanalysis occurs by metonymy. I will treat it as a separate mode of meaning change, although I am aware of proposals that metaphor and metonymy are not incommensurably distinct but should rather be viewed as opposing poles on a continuum (see e.g. Barcelona 2000, Dirven and Po¨rings 2002, and earlier Goossens 1989). Following their view, the question about the nature of meaning change in reanalysis might have a quite simple answer: we could observe that all wittnessed changes are located somewhere on this prospective continuum, sometimes leaning more towards the metaphoric pole, sometimes more towards the metonymic. I think that this might be a possible answer but one which would not tell us very much. The proposal will be taken up at the end of the following subsection where I point out some of its merits and drawbacks in more detail.
2.4 Metonymy and Historical Pragmatics The approaches to meaning change in grammaticalization (and reanalysis) that will be reviewed in the present section are all similar in that they seek the causes of language change in actual communication. In order to appreciate 11 While Heine, Claudi, and Hu¨nnemeyer concede that emerging metaphor arises through pragmatic inferencing (thus anticipating the pragmatic approaches in section 2.4), we may doubt whether new meanings that arise in grammaticalization through pragmatic inferencing do indeed require any extra licensing by metaphor. The facts favour the contrary.
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this aspect, it might be worth revisiting the metaphor approach for a moment: metaphors crucially rest on facts about the world, in particular an ontological source domain and a target domain, and the way in which the former can be mapped onto the latter. If such a constellation is given (and appreciated as salient in a given culture), any speaker can at any time decide to coin a metaphor which exploits this ontological similarity. Metaphors need not be licensed by previous discourse. Pragmatic accounts of grammaticalization, in contrast, share the view that grammaticalization requires a preparatory phase, a characteristic type of previous uses of an item, which is a necessary prerequisite for grammaticalization to come under way. An early proponent is Gustaf Stern (Stern 1931: ch. XIII). Stern singles out a class of meaning changes which he calls ‘permutation’ and which he characterizes as follows: (1) A word is used in a phrase where a notion in some way connected with its meaning is liable to form an element of the context. (2) By frequent use, the associated notion is associated also to the word. (3) The associated notion takes the place of the original meaning, in phrases of the type mentioned. (4) The word is used in the new, secondary, meaning, in phrases of other kinds, where the primary meaning is not possible. (Stern 1931: 353)
Stern was mainly concerned with meaning shifts that leave the grammatical category of an item unchanged. Changes like the famous beads ‘prayers’ > ‘pearls’ or fast ‘immovable’ > ‘at high speed’ are at the core of Stern’s interest. Yet he points out the crucial dependency of these changes on earlier utterance contexts and situations of use: the connection between ‘prayers’ and ‘pearls’ occurs only in limited utterance contexts where one might talk about beads. These utterance situations give rise to reinterpretation. And, most interestingly, Stern assumed that the reinterpretation was from sentence to word rather than an immediate reinterpretation of the word beads or fast (see Stern 1931: 352; also Stern 1921). I take Stern as a Wrst proponent of ‘semantic reanalysis’. More recently, Elizabeth C. Traugott in cooperation with Ko¨nig, Hopper, Schwenter, Dasher, Tabor, and other colleagues proposed a theory of context based meaning change in pragmatic terms. An early programmatic defence of this kind of approach, as opposed to metaphor and bleaching, was given in Traugott and Ko¨nig (1991), and the position deWned in that paper lies at the core of a wealth of other work by Traugott and her co-authors, e.g. Traugott, (1988), Hopper and Traugott (1993), Tabor and Traugott (1998), Schwenter and Traugott (2000), Traugott and Dasher (2002), but her views have also been adopted by many other researchers in grammaticalization (see Detges
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1999, Waltereit 1999). The success of the theory is moreover witnessed by the fact that it led to the foundation of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics. The picture drawn by Traugott is strikingly in line with Stern’s views. The following Wve-step process reXects the current version of the theory, the Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change: 1. In a Wrst stage, an item L possesses a coded meaning M1 . 2. In concrete utterance situations, this item L can be used in sentences that give rise to certain pragmatic implicatures (called Invited Inferences, brieXy IIN). 3. These inferences can be exploited innovatively in the associative stream of speech and are re-weighted. 4. These processes eventually lead to conventionalization of certain inferences for certain sentences that contain the item L. (These conventionalized inferences are also called Generalized Invited Inferences, or GIIN, by Traugott and Dasher.) 5. At the Wnal stage II, the conventionalized invited inferences have given rise to a new coded meaning for item L which is then ambiguous between meaning M1 and (new) meaning M2 . (See Traugott and Dasher 2002: 38, Wg. 1.3.) The later parts of the present book adopt this theory as the basic picture and propose to reWne it in certain respects. While Stern was mainly concerned with meaning change at the word level, meaning change in grammaticalization and reanalysis clearly require that the changes in question take place in the tension between sentence meaning and word meaning. Traugott demonstrates lucidly and with a wealth of examples that the crucial link is not one between two concepts but arises at the propositional level. A literal sentence meaning gives rise, by Gricean pragmatic inferencing, to further information (likewise propositions), and only via this detour will one or the other word in a sentence be ascribed a new meaning M2 by conventionalization (Hopper and Traugott 1993: ch. 4.2 explicate the links to pragmatics, which will also be taken up in Chapter 3). Stern likewise maintained a sentence-centred view of the process, an insight that may be somewhat obscured by the fact that he uses the term ‘phrase referent’ for what one would today call ‘sentence denotation’ or ‘proposition denoted’. The Wnal step from stage (4) to (5) has not been extensively investigated so far. In some sense, it is just clear that speakers/hearers can form a hypothesis about a word’s meaning once they see the word occurring in a sentence, know what the sentence means, and know the meanings of all other parts of the sentence. Still, even if we know that every speaker can perform this operation,
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
41
this will not make a description in theoretical terms superXuous. The process has been described as hypothetico-deductive reasoning in Itkonen (2002),12 however at a very abstract level and with only sketchy hints about detailed semantic representation. The ability to perform semantic composition lies at the heart of the crucial step from (4) to (5). In recent years, the laws that govern semantic composition have been studied in formal semantics, and concise representations of denotations and semantic-pragmatic composition can successfully mirror core aspects of language use with great precision. The present study oVers a Wrst attempt to put these insights to work in historical semantics. Compositional semantics allows us to represent how speakers reconstruct the meaning of an item from an overall sentence meaning, showing an impressive analytic potential. The resulting meanings are used as conWdently as if they had been looked up in grammar books. Compositionality is hence operant not only bottom-up—in order to code and decode the meaning of new sentences—but also top-down in order to determine the meaning contribution of isolated words to a known whole. This view inXuences our expectations as to which speakers Wrst adopt a new meaning as part of their linguistic system. Case studies as well as the emerging theoretical picture strongly suggest that the changes in question occur primarily in the mental lexicon of adult speakers. Adult speakers experience the crucial kind of pragmatically loaded communicative situations and adopt the relevant conventionalizations that lead to the Wnal stage in (5). Note that this assumption does not conXict with the claim, frequently made in formal literature on syntactic change, that ‘reanalysis’ occurs between one generation of speakers and the next, i.e. is a process initiated in Wrst language acquisition (see Lightfoot 1991, 1999, Andersen 1973). The instances of grammaticalization that we are interested in here are local. They concern the lexical entry of items, not the overall grammar. I propose that local shifts can occur in adult grammars, while global reorganizations most likely occur in Wrst language acquisition. This view can be reconciled with formal theories on Wrst language acquisition; Hopper and Traugott (1993) adopt a very similar position. Let me once more come back to the Wve stages of the Invited Inference Theory of Semantic Change and focus on the details of stage (3). This stage refers to those contexts of use of an item that lay the ground for reinterpretation in (4)/(5). These contexts have been described as ‘downtuning’ some 12 Itkonen criticizes, rightly in my view, previous proposals and particularly the frequently quoted paper by Andersen (1973). He shows that even though the general idea was right, Andersen equated the steps of hypothetical-deductive reasoning with speaker’s rationale in language change in a mistaken manner.
42
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
aspects of the literal meaning of sentences, and ‘highlighting’ aspects of the inferred meaning (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 1.3.2, also Danchev and Kyto¨ 1994). In other words, the item in question, from a certain point on, tends to be used more and more in sentences where the pragmatic inference is more salient, more relevant, much more the real information contribution to discourse than the literal meaning of the sentence. It is important to remember, though, that these contexts so far were witnessed only in retrospect. The experience shared by all those who conduct an empirical study in grammaticalization is that the item in question occurs for some time in sentences of an ambivalent nature: they make sense both under the older and the newer use of the item, and we sometimes can only guess which sense was intended by the speaker. Eventually, Wrst instances of the item in an unambiguously modern use show up in source texts—proof that something must have happened in the preceding phase. We may assume that at least the Wrst ambiguous uses must have been produced and interpreted by speakers and hearers on the basis of the old mental lexicon. For these speakers, there was nothing ambiguous about the respective sentences. There must have been something special in certain contexts in addition to a potential ambiguity, something that invited interlocutors to change their lexicon in accordance with this ambiguity. I will refer to contexts of use that oVered the right kind of structural and semantic ambiguity plus additional instigating factors as onset contexts of reanalysis. Additional instigating factors that start reanalysis (or grammaticalization) have been proposed in the literature. The communicative intentions of the interlocutors are frequently named as the reason for change, and more speciWcally the wish to express information beyond what the means of literal language use would allow. Grammaticalization occurs, as Hopper and Traugott (1993) suggest, as a problem solving strategy of the speaker in order to improve expressivity of language. It is left somewhat unclear whether speakers achieve these improvements by appropriate ‘upgrading’ and ‘downtuning’ (which they in turn do how?) or whether upgrading and downtuning themselves are witnesses of earlier stepwise achievements in language improvement. Moreover note that the expressive needs cannot be so pressing, given that in the onset contexts—that is, those contexts where those changes occur that only later lead to improved expressivity in other sentences—these needs are perfectly met by the implications of the respective sentence. If the speaker had not been able to convey what he or she wanted by way of an implication, the possibility for reanalysis would never have arisen. But this means that speakers in fact could express what they wanted. Hence, poor
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
43
expressivity cannot be the driving factor alone. We need to assume that speakers, somewhat meticulously, hold the expressive need to convey some piece of information as the literal content of a sentence. In a related vein, Traugott points out subjectiWcation as another driving force in semantic change. Speakers use (conventionalized) pragmatic inferencing to convey information about their inner conception of the world and inter-subjective relations. In using this mode of information transport, they can express more about their inner states than literal language use would allow. Traugott (1989) demonstrates that the emergence of epistemic uses of modals in English is an instance of subjectiWcation; the emergence of discourse markers is another typical Weld that witnesses this general tendency. It seems that further empirical research in language use in both the past and the present is needed to reveal the nature of onset contexts. Only such research can show whether needs such as the desire to express something literally rather than indirectly are actually a driving force in language change. We will come back to onset contexts in section 2.6 below. Let me end this section with a brief excursion into terminological issues. Meaning change under grammaticalization, described in terms of pragmatic inferencing and conventionalization, is commonly classed as metonymic by its proponents (Hopper and Traugott 1993: ch. 4.3, Traugott and Dasher 2002). This view successfully highlights that pragmatic inferencing and subsequent reinterpretation is not a typical metaphoric shift, and the metaphor view on grammaticalization that was reported in the previous section is therefore implicitly refuted. However, I would like to point out that meaning change under grammaticalization is also diVerent in several respects from typical metonymy. Metonymic meaning shift, like metaphor, is commonly viewed as a transfer that rests on the facts of the world. Ko¨vecses and Radden (1998) oVer a general theory of metonymy which rests on this assumption. They develop a typology of metonymies in terms of idealized conceptual models (ICM, subjective reXections of facts in the world) and posit that metonymy can arise (a) between the whole ICM and its parts, and (b) between diVerent parts of the same ICM. The authors proceed to a list of about thirty-Wve instantiations of these two modes. These instantiations conWrm that the authors are thinking of ICMs as reXections of comparatively stable facts and relations in the world. They oVer no example where an ICM would arise only in certain communicative situations.13 This picture—comprehensive as it is—will evidently 13 Ko¨vecses and Radden’s examples include cases like object for material constituting that object, successive subevents for complex events, category for member of the category, category for defining property, instrument for action, state/event for the thing that caused it, etc. I will not go though the full list of about thirty-Wve cases.
44
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
require substantial extensions to cover even simple examples of meaning 14 change in grammaticalization. Most importantly, their view does not include the possibility that metonymic links only arise because speakers used certain constructions with certain communicative intentions. If we look into productive uses of metonymy (see Nunberg 1995), we will Wnd that speakers commonly exploit existing factual links between entities. The waitress who refers to the customer as the ham sandwich, the doctor who is going to see the ulcer, the mechanic who states that the red key is parked in the backyard all make use of existing relations between various objects in their everyday surroundings. The hearer will use pragmatic inferencing to conclude that the speaker cannot literally assert that a key is parked somewhere. Yet, no pragmatic inferencing whatsoever is necessary in order to establish the link between key and car. To put it bluntly, the link between key and car is a result of engineering, not a result of communication. Finally, traditional examples of metonymy are commonly based on links between ontologically comparatively simple objects like humans, artefacts, events, or at most simple properties. The semantic objects that play a role in grammaticalization, in contrast, are frequently of a much more complex nature. In particular the resultant meanings sometimes only seem to become conceptually salient in the grammaticalization process. We can once more take the venir de faire past tense in French as a schematic example. The resultant meaning will have to be something like that in (2.5): (2.5) lP9e (P(e) & e << now ) (2.5) paraphrases as something like ‘give me an event description and I will state that an event of the respective kind took place, and moreover in the recent past’ (after Chapter 3, the reader will perhaps be better equipped to confront terms like this). It may be doubted whether a concept like this would even be accessible prior to Wrst encounters in onset contexts. Once more, we see that the crucial target meaning (here: of venir de) does not stand in an independent metonymic relation to the source meaning (here: directed movement). It may be questioned whether this object lP9e (P(e) & e << now ) would ever have gained cognitive salience, had not people started to use movement venir de constructions in sentences with certain temporal implications. The example hence highlights once more the diVerence between traditional metonymy and meaning change under reanalysis. Traditional metonymy builds on links between independently existent concepts. Reanalysis establishes new concepts as possible denotations. 14
Unless one were willing to read idealized conceptual model liberally as anything that you might want to think of.
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
45
In sum, I adopt a three-way distinction between metaphor, metonymy, and semantic reanalysis/meaning change by pragmatic inferencing. This rigid three-way distinction diVers from the more holistic picture favoured in Hopper and Traugott (1993: ch. 3) and Traugott and Dasher (2002: ch. 1.3) where meaning change under reanalysis may ‘involve’ metaphoric links as well as, more prominently, metonymic shifts. I propose that all that matters for meaning change under reanalysis is the relation between linguistic form (‘what does the respective sentence look like?’), implied proposition (‘what does the speaker intend to tell me?’), and the possibilities to derive the proposition from the sentence in a literal way—meaning shifts granted. According to this view, it is a pure accident whether the resulting meaning shifts carry the Xavour of metaphoric change or not. It would be a question for empirical linguistic research whether metaphoric possibilities enhance meaning change under reanalysis. At present, we can only say that metaphoric links cannot be a necessary prerequisite for meaning change under reanalysis because—as we have seen—there are a considerable number of instances of grammaticalization that do not exploit metaphor. On the other hand, it is a matter of taste whether one wants to call the required coincindence of form and implication metonymic in nature or not. This view remains unaVected by recent proposals towards a uniWed theory of metaphor and metonymy. Barcelona (2000) argues that many instances of Wgurative speech cannot clearly be classed as either metaphoric or metonymic and suggests a mixed mode of transfer instead. He oVers the example of body sensations for emotional states. The equation ‘Anger is hot’ (Barcelona 2000 quoting Goossens 1989) for instance would normally be classed as an instance of metaphor, and yet it derives from the cause–eVect link between negative emotional state and a rise in blood pressure, causing the subjective experience of heat. Cause–eVect based transfers are commonly classed as metonymy. Hence the Wgure seems to be both metaphoric and metonymic. Generally, Barcelona states, metaphors involve contiguity of two domains as well as similarities between two domains, hence favouring a uniWed account rather than a strict dichotomy. Dirven and Po¨rings (2002) argue in the same direction, stating that metonymy and metaphor should be viewed as the poles of a continuum of possible meaning changes rather than incommensurable diVerents. In particular the technique of domain blending (Fauconnier 1994, 1997) seems to capture typical aspects of metaphor as well as metonymy. Nevertheless, one central diVerence between all these kinds of non-literal language use and reanalysis/ grammaticalization remains unaVected: While metaphors, metonymies, and blending relate diVerent independently mastered conceptual domains and exploit this link in terms of language, meaning change under reanalysis can lead to
46
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
denotations that had no previous conceptual status and only became a desirable denotatum in the course of the reanalysis in question. I dare to speculate that the forefather of historical pragmatics, Gustaf Stern, would presumably appreciate the three-way distinction. Interestingly, he never uses the term ‘metonymy’ in connection with the meaning changes in his Class VI ‘permutation’. Stern’s consistent non-use of the term ‘metonymy’ is all the more relevant as he shows no hesitation in localizing metaphor as distributed evenly over his Class IV (‘Transfer’) and Class V (‘Nomination’). Most of his ‘permutation’ examples are traditionally discussed as metonymies (like the famous bead example), yet his central examples are not commonly mentioned as metonymies (like the shift from fast ‘immovable’ to fast ‘at high speed’). Beyond all terminological discussions, however, my interest lies in elucidating the nature of the change processes that can occur under reanalysis. It remains a secondary goal to locate them in any comprehensive classiWcation of modes of meaning change.
2.5 On Discourse Markers In this section, I will come back to the question how the emergence of discourse markers relates to the notion of grammaticalization. We will consider cases like the shift of German weil, obwohl, or bloß from subordinative conjunction/focus particle to discourse marker, or the emergence of a discourse marker use of English indeed, in fact, and the conditional if-then.15 The German causal connective weil goes back to the temporal adverb die Weile (‘while’), as traced in Traugott and Ko¨nig (1991). The meaning shift was driven by a pragmatic inference something like ‘while, hence because of ’. In recent years, however, as was clearly shown in Gu¨nthner (1996, 2001), the particle has acquired a textual function, connecting a sentence with a reason why the speaker has uttered it. In this function, weil is obligatorily followed by a verbsecond (German: main) sentence. Minimal pairs are given in (2.6) to (2.9): (2.6) Gehst Du am Sonntag ins Schwimmbad? Weil, es wird regnen. go-2.sg you on Sunday to-the swimming-pool Because it will rain. ‘Will you go to the swimming pool on Sunday? I’m asking because it will rain.’ (2.7) Gehst Du am Sonntag ins Schwimmbad, weil es regnen wird? go-2.sg you on Sunday to-the swimming-pool because it rain will ‘Will you go to the swimming pool on sunday because it will rain?’ 15
As in if you are hungry, there is beef in the fridge.
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(2.8) Sie ist sicher mu¨de, weil, sie schla¨ft schon seit 12 Stunden. She is certainly tired because she sleeps already since 12 hours ‘She must be tired (I infer this because) she has been sleeping for 12 hours.’ (2.9) Sie ist sicher mu¨de, weil sie schon seit 12 Stunden schla¨ft. She is certainly tired because she already since 12 hours sleeps ‘She is certainly tired because she has been sleeping for 12 hours already.’ (strangely suggests that long sleeping is the cause of tiredness) A similar textual function has been pointed out for obwohl (‘although’) in Gu¨nthner (2000). In (2.10), obwohl is used as a sentence connective. It has the same function as English even though, asserting the conjoined truth of conXicting facts. Intertextually as in (2.11), obwohl serves to withdraw a previous assertion. (2.10)
Er ist unglu¨cklich, obwohl er viel Geld verdient. He is unhappy although he a-lot-of money earns ‘He is unhappy even though he earns a lot of money.’
(2.11)
Er ist sicher unglu¨cklich. Obwohl, er verdient viel Geld. He is certainly unhappy. Obwohl he earns a-lot-of money ‘He is certainly unhappy. Or perhaps that is still not true: after all, he earns a lot of money’
The diVerent uses of bloß were outlined in Chapter 1 and are further described in Scheier (2002). The development of English indeed and in fact have been traced in great detail in Schwenter and Traugott (2000) and Traugott and Dasher (2002). Tabor and Traugott (1998) report the development of two more English discourse markers, instead and anyway. An inspiring overview of contemporary literature on discourse markers in English and German is put forward in Couper-Kuhlen and Kortmann (2000). Discourse markers and similar items do not pattern very well with classical cases in grammaticalization. If we apply Lehmann’s parameters of grammaticalization (see 2.1), we Wnd that emerging discourse markers do not show the right behaviour in many respects. Considering the syntagmatic criteria, discourse markers commonly have a higher scope (semantically, frequently also syntactically) than their ancestor items, thus contradicting the tendency towards decrease in scope as suggested by Lehmann. This point has been demonstrated in great detail in Tabor and Traugott (1998).16 16 They even go as far as to suggest increase in structural scope as a criterion for grammaticalization that should replace Lehmann’s decrease in structural scope tendency. Still Tabor and Traugott criticize
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Discourse markers are tendentially less bonded, less closely integrated into the sentence(s) than their ancestor items. Traditional interpunctation in German even suggests that obwohl in (2.11) or weil in (2.6) and (2.8) should be interjections rather than coordinations. This contradicts Lehmann’s criterion of increasing bondedness. Moreover, discourse markers usually show a greater syntactic variability than their ancestor items. For instance, the German examples listed above commonly show the following pattern: if the item conjoins a main clause with a subordinate clause, it may be either an older conjunction or a newer discourse particle. If the item, however, conjoins two main clauses, it is used as a discourse marker. Hence the discourse markers allow for more freedom, contradicting Lehmann’s tendency of decrease in syntagmatic variability. Looking at Lehmann’s paradigmatic criteria, the picture is less decisive. Discourse markers can certainly lose phonological integrity (witness the English in deede > indeed). In terms of semantic integrity, older and newer item are frequently at the same level. The best example to witness this fact may be German weil. It contributes exactly the same semantic content (CAUSAL, ‘because’) at two diVerent propositional levels: ‘A happened because B happened’ versus ‘I say A, because of B’. Items that give rise to discourse markers usually shift from one closed class to another (temporal conjunction > discourse marker, focus particle > discourse marker, etc.) and hence show no clear increase or decrease in paradigmaticity. Discourse markers, Wnally, also do not Wt into the traditional Lehmann picture with respect to paradigmatic variability, the degree to which a category becomes obligatory in certain contexts. Although speakers agree that conversations without any use of discourse markers sound unnatural or even deliberately rude, there is as yet no grammatical requirement for speakers to set discourse markers. In summary, clines that lead from adverbs, conjunctions, or focus particles to discourse markers will tendentially contradict four of Lehmann’s six tendencies for grammaticalization. Hence, we will want to conclude that discourse markers do not pattern with other examples of grammaticalization very well. This Wnding is supported by the observation that the realm of discourse markers seems to oVer true two-way pathways of change under reanalysis (see Chapter, 1 n. 3). In spite of the apparent diVerences between classical instances of grammaticalization and classical emergent discourse Lehmann’s criteria in a conservative fashion, suggesting that one general tendency should be replaced by another.
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
49
markers, scholars show a persistent inclination to subsume the rise of discourse markers under grammaticalization. In 1991, Werner Abraham published the rich and inspiring paper ‘The grammaticalization of the German modal particles’ where he describes the emergence of a great wealth of discourse markers. Generally, collections of papers and workshop publications use ‘grammaticalization’ in a wide sense, clearly embracing discourse markers. The above-mentioned article of Abraham is included in Traugott and Heine’s Approaches to Grammaticalization, and the contribution by Traugott and Ko¨nig likewise addresses discourse markers alongside other examples. Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paul Hopper’s 1998 volume ‘The Limits of Grammaticalization’ includes Hopper’s paper on ‘the paradigm at the end of the universe’ where he shows that a vague class of grammatically unpronounced items—he dubbs them as ‘adverbs’ including, of course, discourse markers—seems to constitute one endpoint in grammaticalization. Stefania Giannini’s contribution on Italian local deixis in pronoun systems (in the same volume) is another investigation in language change that ends in an indexical rather than a grammatical category (‘intersubjectiWcation’, following Traugott and Dasher 2002). More recently, Wischer and Diewald (2002) state explicitly that they subsume discourse marker clines under grammaticalization even though, as they concede, others might want to draw the line more narrowly. Traugott and Dasher (2002) suggest that discourse markers and other instances of meaning change under reanalysis should be viewed as a coherent Weld of data, in particular because discourse markers are prime examples of meaning change by subjectiWcation. While the source items usually make a truth functional statement (temporal relation between two events, causal relation between two facts, scalar assertions, adverbial modiWcations, etc.) the target item—the discourse marker—makes a more subjective assertion about the speaker attitude and viewpoint, meta-comments on previous discourse, etc. Traugott and Dasher suggest that subjectiWcation is a major driving force in language change in general, thereby implying that grammaticalization and discourse marker clines should be similar in at least this respect, even if in no other (Traugott and Dasher 2002: ch. 7). Summarizing, we may state that discourse markers, like grammatically bound items, arise by a syntactic and semantic reorganization of previous material in language. In both cases, syntactic and semantic change are inseparably intertwined in a two-way dependency: the new syntactic structure drives the semantic environment, and hence in part the semantic contribution, of the newly emerging item. Conversely, the semantic contribution of the newly emerging item determines its combinatorial potential and therefore, to a certain extent, its future grammatical nature. In both cases, Wnally, meaning
50
Meaning Change under Reanalysis
change is driven by pragmatic inferencing and conventionalization (see Traugott and Dasher 2002: chs. 3–6). It will have to remain an exciting topic for future research to bring the tools of formal semantics to bear on diachronic and synchronic investigation of discourse markers.
2.6 Communication: The Onsets of Change Meaning change by reanalysis is unlike metaphor and metonymy in that we only very rarely witness reanalysis in a volitional instance of creative language use. Accordingly, the notion of a ‘dead reanalysis’, mirroring the concept of a ‘dead metaphor’, does not make sense: reanalysis arises as a result of conventionalization; unlike metaphors it is not ‘killed’ by conventionalization. The question of the nature of onset contexts of change therefore poses a prime challenge in the investigation into meaning change under reanalysis. Under what circumstances do speakers feel inclined to use a certain construction so as to invite reanalysis? When do hearers feel the conscious or subconscious inclination to reanalyse a construction—provisionally or as a new construction in their language? How often must this happen in order for it to get established as a persisting change in language? These questions have received surprisingly little attention in the literature. Janda (2001) draws attention to the fact that sociolinguistic research on grammaticalization is practically non-existent. He concludes that we do not know much about the sociolinguistic nature of the rise and spread of grammaticalization, and we can justiWably read this in the wider sense that we do not know much about the communicative nature of onset contexts in general. Janda refers to the universality hypothesis about language change (Labov 1972), which states that the nature and rate of language change must be approximately the same at all times. As a consequence, he points out, grammaticalization (and reanalysis) must in principle currently take place. Investigations into such current instances would oVer richer and more detailed insights than fragmentary written records on language use in the past. Janda therefore advocates more sociolinguistic research in current grammaticalization processes. Yet he fails to name one obstacle to this enterprise, namely our lack of ability to spot onset contexts of grammaticalization, contexts where the transmission and use of new constructions could be investigated. Still, some concise ideas about the nature of onset contexts of grammaticalization and reanalysis have been brought forward. According to one line of thinking, reanalysis takes place in the tension between holistic and analytic interpretation of language. Haiman (1994) proposes that ritualization is an omnipresent tendency in social interaction which Wnds its linguistic manifestation in
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grammaticalization. In a similar vein, Lehmann (2002) contrasts holistic and analytic interpretation of language. He argues that holistic interpretations of a phrase or sentence can potentially tie together literal meaning, implied meaning, and linguistic form in a way that results in reanalysis as soon as any one speaker starts to build up the sentence in a literal word-by-word fashion. Traugott and Dasher (2002) in contrast allow for speakers to intentionally shape their language and to instigate reanalysis. Particular stress is laid on the fact that speakers can invite certain pragmatic inferences, thereby volitionally implying the unsaid and making it part of the information conveyed. As soon as these invitations to understand the unsaid become a conventionalized part of language use, the way is free for reanalysis (see also section 2.4). Heine (2002) and Diewald (2002) address the quest for the contexts of change under two slightly diVerent, but basically similar perspectives. Heine (2002: 86) distinguishes four types of subsequent contexts of use of an item: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)
Initial stage Bridging contexts Switch contexts Conventionalization
The neutral initial stage is followed by use of an item in bridging contexts which give rise to pragmatic inferences in favour of the new meaning. In bridging contexts, so to speak, the potential new meaning enters the stage. These contexts are followed by switch contexts where the new meaning aspects are relevant to a degree so as to make the older, literal meaning practically superXuous, even though the use of the construction can still be understood in the literal fashion, accounting for all additional information by way of inferencing. Finally, unambiguous uses of the item in the new sense witness its conventionalization. These uses can no longer be accounted for on the basis of the item in its older meaning. While Heine’s four-stage model is intuitively convincing and coheres well with Traugott and Dasher’s model, his applications to sample developments are somewhat less satisfying. Notably, his survey of the development of reXexive to passive marker in !Xun (Khosian language, Southern Angola) is a synchronic collection of formal reXexives of diVerent verbs and their intepretation. Example (2.12) below is oVered as an example of a ‘bridging context’ (for transcription conventions see Heine 2002). While it is certainly plausible that the reXexive form of a verb meaning ‘to bear, to give birth to’ in contemporary !Xun will in all likelihood be understood as a passive rather than a literal reXexive, we get no information as to why the respective sentence in !Xun (quoted as a stage (ii) use) is legitimate at all.
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(2.12)
!Xun (North Khosian, Khosian) ma ke gjje´- a` mı` j’e´ ke a`ngo`la` 1:sg past bear-r my self tr Angola ‘I bore myself in Angola.’
The English gloss would not be ‘bridging’ at all. It would at best be a sentence that signals that the speaker volitionally uses the English reXexive construction in a non-literal way—presumably in order to suggest that his place of birth was Angola. Yet this interpretation involves more than pragmatic inferencing. Importantly, it already presupposes a renovation of language rather than paving its way. Likewise, Heine’s example of a switch context is in fact a straight instance of a passive (formally cognate to a reXexive): ‘The money was stolen,’ lit.: ‘The money stole itself.’ It is not entirely clear why Heine only accepts a sentence as a stage (iv) instance of the passive once the agent is realized as an additional transitive object. He seems to suggest that a stage (ii) and stage (iii) sentence immediately turns into a stage (iv) sentence as soon as an agent like ‘my mother’ or ‘by a pickpocket’ is added. Notably, his examples do not specify the communicative intentions of the speaker, or the relevance of some piece of information in a given context. This contrasts with, for instance, the attempts made in Hopper and Traugott (1993: 82 f.) to speculate about the contexts of emergence of the English going-to future where they state that in a sentence like ‘He is going to be married’ the imminent marriage should be much more relevant for the interlocutors than the actual movement of the referent of ‘he’. No similar pragmatic reasoning is oVered in Heine (2002). Diewald (2002) bases her system on three subsequent types of contexts: atypical contexts of use, critical contexts of use, and isolating contexts of use. Diewald’s typology shows visible resemblances to the four-way distinction of Heine (particularly once we add an initial stage of neutral contexts of use); however she focuses on the linguistic environment of an item. An item is used in an atypical context if it gives rise to pragmatic inferences in favour of the new meaning but is structurally an unambiguous exponent of the older grammatical construction. Critical contexts combine semantic and structural ambiguity. Phenomenologically speaking, these are the quotes in corpora where the researcher might wonder whether they show a use of the older or of the newer item. Isolating contexts, Wnally, are those uses that are clearly based on the new item structurally and semantically.17
17 We might hence speculate that Heine’s stage (ii) example would be classed as an isolating context in Diewald’s system.
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Both accounts reXect the perspective of the philologist, concentrating on the question ‘when do I—the hearer/reader—know that a language change must be under way?’ rather than on the much more challenging: ‘Which conscious motives or subconscious trends drive me as a speaker/writer to produce such utterances in the Wrst place?’ Neither Heine nor Diewald considers the communicative intention of an utterance, the epistemic background of speaker and hearer, and the question of what might be the most relevant information in a given context. Particularly Heine’s examples of ‘bridging contexts’ are clearly the product of language change rather than its onset. In that sense, both authors leave the question about the nature of onset contexts of reanalysis unanswered. In order to illustrate this criticism, let us come back to the fact that French has a venir de faire immediate past tense, and English and German do not. Certainly, a speaker of present-day English or German can utter a sentence like (2.13): (2.13)
I am (just) coming from doing the shopping. Ich komme (gerade) vom Einkaufen.
Such utterances take place from time to time, and all give rise to the implication ‘I have just done the shopping’—or more generally ‘I have just done X’, depending on the embedded verb X. Would such uses be bridging contexts in terms of Heine? Certainly yes, if we look at Heine’s verbal characterization of ‘bridging context’. Not so clearly, however, if we take his examples of bridging contexts into consideration. While a reXexive of the verb to bear already requires a reinterpretation, nothing in the sentences in (2.13) shows imminent language change (and to my knowledge, neither English nor German shows any traceable tendency to develop an immediate past tense). Would sentences (2.13) be critical contexts in terms of Diewald? Certainly yes, if we look at her verbal characterization of ‘critical context’. Yet it seems that such utterances miss exactly that critical bit that would turn them into onset contexts for reanalysis. More than mere pragmatic inference is required in order to force a construction’s meaning to shift. In the sense of conservative language use, there is nothing critical or non-standard in sentences (2.13). It appears that Lehmann (2002), even though he operates in much more traditional terms than both Heine and Diewald, might still have something to say as to when sentences like (2.13) turn into ‘critical mass’ for language change. What is crucially missing in the accounts of Heine and Diewald is a consideration as to when and why a certain phrase or construction (the reXexive, a modal, the coming from doing construction) turns into a stereotypical way to convey holistically some piece of information. Under what circumstances would a speaker use the coming from doing construction as a
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ritualized construction to inform the hearer about recent activities? What ‘critical contexts’ did speakers of French encounter that speakers of English and German did not? The diVerence between a neutral utterance of (2.13) and a ‘critical use’ of (2.13) cannot be captured in terms of pragmatic inferencing: the implications of (2.13) about the immediate past are inevitable. Taking up Lehmann’s proposal, we may speculate that an implication becomes critical once speakers start to use (2.13) as a somewhat longer version of I have just done the shopping (German: Ich habe gerade eingekauft). Chapter 4 includes an investigation into the contexts of emergence of the going to future that is conducted under such leading questions as ‘when does conventionalization start?’ and ‘what kinds of contexts support conventionalization’. Even though the results have to remain incomplete—given that we have almost no information about spoken discourse at the time—they show that conventionalization can be traced even after several centuries. Traugott and Dasher (2002) focus on speakers’ attempts to increase the expressiveness of language. This suggests that they view creativity as the driving force in conventionalization. The views of Haiman (1994), in contrast, might be interpreted so as to lean towards the laziness explanation. The nature of available data will frequently make it impossible in a particular instance of language change to investigate the communicative nature of onset contexts. As pointed out by Janda (2001), the investigation of language change and variation in the recent past, and sociolinguistic investigation of presentday language use, can be more elucidating than linguistic palaeontology— which may be more spectacular, but also more speculative. Language changes of a more recent date oVer an exciting Weld of investigation into issues where sociolinguistic, diachronic, interactional, and philological aspects of communication need to be considered in concord. The case studies in Chapters 5, 6, and 7 oVer a Wrst step towards investigating the communicative factors that instigate reanalysis. Even though they are necessarily fragmental, they may help to get a better understanding of the onset of language change.
2.7 Grammaticalization, Once Again I reviewed previous accounts of meaning change under reanalysis, in the literature frequently addressed more narrowly as meaning change under grammaticalization. I surveyed approaches that treat the respective changes as bleaching, as meaning changes by metaphor, and approaches that view them as mainly pragmatically driven meaning change (also studied under the label metonymy). In the remainder of the book I will adopt and reWne the last approach and develop a spellout in terms of truth conditional semantics.
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This basic position has repercussions on the question whether we view grammaticalization as occurring in discrete steps or as a gradual process. I will assume that the meaning changes under investigation occur in discrete steps. Even though the subsequent language stages may only be minimally diVerent, it will be fruitful to view them still as distinct positions in language history. More speciWcally, speakers are conceived as passing through discrete stages in steps that reXect Heine’s or Diewald’s four-stage systems in section 2.6. (i) The speaker possesses a lexical entry for the traditional ‘old’ item, including information about grammatical behaviour, meaning, and conventions of use. (ii) The speaker still possesses only one lexical entry, but experiences that the conventions of use undergo a change so that, using the item in certain kinds of sentences, interlocutors can conventionally be expected to be more concerned with certain implications of the assertion than with the literal assertion itself. (iii) Experiencing such uses of the old item, the speaker/hearer hypothetically adopts a new syntactic and semantic analysis for the respective full sentences. What once was a salient implication is understood as the literal content under the new analysis. This reanalysis leads to a hypothetical new entry in the lexicon, pairing the phonological content of the older item with new grammatical and semantic information. (iv) If the hypothetical new entry is conWrmed in more interaction (or if the speaker has an innovative temperament), it is adopted as a permanent entry in the mental lexicon. The speaker will henceforth use the new item trustfully (hence producing Diewald’s ‘isolating contexts’). Let me point out that the speaker at stage (iii) is not uncertain about the nature of the new entry nor does he have to develop the new entry ‘gradually’ from the older one. The only uncertainty that might be experienced is of a sociological nature: do other speakers actually possess and use this new entry, or not? While the speaker may be gradually more and more convinced that the new item is indeed part of the common language, he or she does not, according to this picture, gradually develop the meaning and grammar of the new entry. This four-stage process can be viewed as a speaker-internal version of Traugott and Dasher’s Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change. The resulting picture does not stand in conXict to the observation, made by several scholars, that grammaticalization is epiphenomenologically a gradual process. The following quote from Lehmann (concerning the grammaticalization of auxiliaries) reXects the latter position:
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The dispute whether auxiliaries are main verbs or not . . . is fruitless. Two grammatical categories connected on a grammaticalization scale are neither the same nor distinct. The diVerence between them is gradual, and there is no clear-cut dividing line. (Lehmann 1982 [1995]: 33)
I agree with Lehmann (as well as others, see for instance Haspelmath 1998) that the major grammatical categories that are in use in syntactic theory will in all likelihood not be suYcient to trace the—perhaps small—steps along a grammaticalization cline. I volitionally used the term ‘grammatical information’ rather than ‘syntactic category’ in the characterization of lexical entries in (i) to (iv) above. Semantic information, on the other hand, can be Wne-grained to any necessary degree such that the formal framework poses no lower limits to the discrete steps in semantic change. Nevertheless, the speaker will have to justify each single use of a form by appropriate lexical information. I likewise agree that the uses of an item in source texts seem to support a gradual view on language change, an impression that the case studies in later chapters will amply conWrm. This fact can however be reconciled with a model of meaning change in discrete steps. SpeciWcally, speakers in stage (iii) above will produce sentences that can equally well be analysed on the basis of the old item as on the basis of the new item, the two analyses sometimes diVering slightly in their pragmatic links to previous discourse. (The case studies in later chapters, particularly the development of selbst and lauter, will oVer examples.) To the degree that speakers gain faith in the hypothetical new item, they will use it in more and more contexts, gradually manifesting its full range of potential uses in the data. This process was Wrst described as actualization in Timberlake’s (1977) ‘Renalysis and actualisation in syntactic change’. The recent collection of studies in actualization by Andersen (2001c) reXects a renewed interest in this notion. Andersen (2001a, 2001b) explores the possibility that further language internal factors might drive actualization, and speciWcally that markedness has an inXuence on the eventual outcome. In terms of discrete language change, we must hence in principle be aware of the possibility that the four stages (i) to (iv) can be passed anew even before full actualization of an intermediate stage has taken place. We might also want to allow for a correction of the hypothetical new item at stage (iii). I will in the following maintain the discrete picture of language change by reanalysis, allowing for these reWnements. The present chapter, oVering but an incomplete overview of current research in grammaticalization, may help to relate it to the topic of the present monograph. Approaching the data in meaning change under reanaly-
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sis with the tools of truth value based semantics, I aim at making a contribution to research in language change and variation in the following respects. . What is the nature of the contexts that instigate reanalysis? Perhaps surprisingly, it turns out that semantic analysis in terms of truth conditional approaches can shed new light on this question. We will see cases where reanalysis seems to have been enhanced by the fact that the traditional literal meaning of the sentence(s) was simply unveriWable and therefore pointless in certain contexts of use. A truth conditional semantic approach can highlight the consequences of this kind of communicative failure and capture the semantic defectiveness that can lead to language change. . What leads from sentence meaning to word meaning? It has never been doubted that speakers can derive single word meanings from sentence meanings, if most other parts of the sentence are known. This process at the syntax–semantics interface can be successfully captured with the tools of formal semantics, resulting in a semantic representation of meaning change under reanalysis that brings several facts about language into focus: the compositionality of human language not only allows its Xexible use in synchronic communication but also ensures an automatic adaptation of language to new communicative needs and practices. And it does so with almost mathematical precision, thus ensuring that the linguistic system as a whole will work smoothly and reliably even if parts of it are under change. . To what extent can reanalysis predetermine the results of actualization? If we grant speakers the ability to store and process Wne-grained grammatical and semantic representations of words, phrases, and sentences, we will predict that the results of language reorganization are determined with great precision. This view can help us to understand why speakers will often agree about fairly peculiar aspects in the use of a new item. The case studies in the present monograph suggest that there is much less accident and contingency in language change than one might expect: while it remains a matter of historical accident whether a certain kind of change gets instigated in a certain type of onset situation, the results of this change appear to be determined in most respects. This astonishing combination of Xexibility and determinedness in the language system ensures its reliability as a tool for communication as well as its adaptiveness under constantly changing circumstances. Some readers may feel that questions like these have already received ample treatment in the literature and need not be taken up in terms of yet another semantic paradigm. Yet the following quote suggests that at least the relations
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between word meaning, sentence meaning, and semantic composition do require clariWcation. Haspelmath (1999: 1062) proposes that One of the most widely discussed aspects of grammaticalization, the fairly dramatic semantic changes, has not been mentioned explicitly at all so far. The reason is that I am not sure that semantic grammaticalization is as central to the process as has generally been assumed. . . . For instance, the emphatic negation marker pas in older French has lost its pragmatic markedness and has become the normal negation marker, without any semantic changes in the narrow sense having taken place. (emphasis mine)
This quote suggests that there is no semantic side to grammaticalization and hence no interesting object for study. Haspelmath illustrates his claim with the development of French pas ¼ step to pas ¼ negation particle, an issue which will be taken up in Chapter 5. While he correctly observes that the overall sentence meaning of the crucial examples does not change, he fails to acknowledge that the meaning change at the word level is considerable. An explicit account of meaning change under reanalysis will be of help to clarify distinctions of this kind.
3 Truth Conditional Semantics 3.1 Committed to Truth and Falsity In the present study, meaning change is approached with the tools of truth value based semantics in the tradition of Montague (1974). This combination seems promising in order to address the following questions: . What is the combinatorial potential of a word or construction? Does it combine with other expressions? What kinds of expressions? . What is the result of the semantic combinations? . How can the semantic content of a complex expression determine the content of its parts? . What does a word exactly contribute to the overall information conveyed by a sentence? What parameters are speciWed by context, which underspeciWed aspects can only become instantiated after evaluation of literal contents? . How do literal content of a sentence and its implications diVer in status, and what happens if inferred contents are reanalysed as literal contents, or vice versa? The aims of this chapter are threefold. First, I want to recapitulate and motivate some basic assumptions in truth conditional semantics. I will focus on those aspects that have evoked criticism by alternative semantic paradigms like conceptual and cognitive semantics. This is a vital precondition because some of these criticisms amount to the claim that truth conditional semantics by deWnition has nothing substantial to contribute to the investigation of meaning change (e.g. Dirven and Verspoor 1998, Dirven 2000, Sweetser 1999). Secondly, I will introduce some terms and notations on the basis of examples. This will later allow us to concentrate on matters of content without being too much concerned with formulae. Finally, I will brieXy summarize the relation between literal meanings, implications, default inferences, and conversational implicatures. As the previous chapter has shown,
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various kinds of non-literal information that are—accidentally or conventionally—conveyed by sentences could be located as one of the main sources of meaning change. It will therefore be clarifying to present inferential processes and literal meanings as parts of one coherent theoretical framework. The integration of semantics and pragmatics into a common theory is laid out in rich detail in Kadmon (2001). Logical semantics rests on the idea that truth and falsity, ‘yes’ and ‘no’, accepting and rejecting, form the basis of semantic theory. In particular, sentences can be true or false in a given situation, and likewise properties can hold true or not of a given object. Logical semantics has extended and generalized this elementary observation in a way that covers large portions of natural language. Truth and falsity can, of course, be considered as abstract philosophical entities, and logical semantics may often be presented as if this were the correct way to perceive it. In fact, however, the approach is much more down to earth. It can be related to empirically testable facts about language use of speakers: . knowing the meaning of a sentence is knowing under which circumstances it is true/false. . knowing the meaning of a predicate is knowing to which objects/individuals it applies and to which ones it does not. . knowing the meaning of a two-place verb is knowing to which pairs of objects the verb applies and to which ones it does not, etc. The set of objects to which a predicate truthfully applies is also called the extension of the predicate. Likewise the set of pairs of objects that fall under a binary relation is called the extension of the binary relation, and analogously for sets of n-tuples for relations of higher arity. Logical semantics makes the simplifying assumption that the meanings of sentences, nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. essentially rest on their extensions. Is it reasonable to claim that a person knows the meaning of a word like dog if and only if she knows its extension? Of course, we do not want to claim that a speaker of English who masters the meaning of the word dog literally has a large set of dogs somewhere stored in her brain. Yet undeniably this speaker has something in her brain which enables her to perform, for arbitrary objects she might encounter, the dog test: look at the object and say ‘yes’ if it is a dog and ‘no’ if it isn’t. The following, slightly reformulated versions of the above slogans stress this empirical perspective: . someone who knows the meaning of a sentence has something in her mind/brain that enables her to accept or reject the sentence under given circumstances, depending on whether it is true or false;
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. someone who knows the meaning of a predicate has something in her mind/brain that enables her to accept or reject the predicate for a given object, depending on whether it is true or false for this object, etc. These reformulations however seem to evidence a blind spot of the approach. Natural languages, one might object, are basically social objects. There is no divine authority who would deWne the meaning of dog, chair, red, strawberry ice cream, or love in an independent way such that speakers can acquire the ability to grasp this predetermined meaning and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the correct occasions. In fact, you might point out, it is really the other way round. All we ever see of these extensions is a limited number of cases where speakers conWdently apply the word ‘dog’ to an animal, or refuse to do so, often agreeing but sometimes disagreeing or being uncertain. Is it indeed legitimate and reasonable, in view of this limited and shaky evidence, to postulate extensions and make them the basis of a theory of meaning? This objection is justiWed. Nevertheless, the simplifying idealizations of compositional semantics are appropriate because speakers carry out all actual conversation under exactly the same simplifying idealizations. In talking to each other, we behave as if language were a reliable objective tool of communication. Consider, for instance, the verb sing. We have limited experience about what other speakers would call ‘singing’ and what not. Such experiences are the basis for our acquiring the meaning of the word sing. We moreover have the introspective experience that we, personally, would in the vast number of cases be able to classify an activity as being a ‘singing’ or not. We also know that we might encounter certain doubtful cases, and moreover know what kind of linguistic or scientiWc negotiations might be necessary in order to clarify these cases. We extrapolate this introspective experience from ourselves to other speakers, trusting that they feel the same. And we use language under the faithful assumption that our judgements and those of others will, in the normal case, be in concord. We could call this the speaker’s faith in objective language. To appreciate the reality of this faith in objective language, consider how communication would proceed without it. I can use the sentence There is a man singing in the pub to describe the scene I have just seen in the pub. I can utter the sentence towards a complete stranger, expecting that, if she entered the pub, she would agree. In doing so, I will not consider it a possibility that this person, although feeling herself able to produce some extension for the verb ‘sing’, will end up with a set of events considerably diVerent from mine. If we indeed found out that our proposed extensions are distinct, we would either start to negotiate the doubtful cases where we disagree, perhaps seeking the advice of experts or other authorities, or else agree that we use the word
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sing in two diVerent senses. In other words: speakers who want to use the word sing in accord with present-day English are obliged to do so in such a way that their extension conforms to that of ‘everybody else’. This is to be read in the strict sense: it is not suYcient that ‘everybody’s extension of sing’ just overlaps in the majority of cases. Ideally, we use language as if there were total agreement. We can overtly express doubts in single cases (Caruso himself might call this singing but I certainly disagree), explicating that the given case might not conform to the communicative ideal. But we will never leave it uncommented if we Wnd ourselves in such a situation, simply accepting it as the normal case of felicitous communication. (We might politely decide to keep the comments to ourselves, though.) If we want to give a name to this mysterious ability of speakers to master extensions in an intersubjectively reliable way, we could use the term ‘concept’. Indeed, it has been proposed that the mastery of a concept is necessary and suYcient for a speaker to grasp the meaning of the word linked to that concept (JackendoV 1998 tends towards this synthesis of truth conditional and conceptual semantics). In this terminology, the mastery of the concept of ‘singing’ will enable a speaker to produce the extension of sing in concord with common practice. There is one quite simple and striking respect in which the extension of a word, e.g. sing, is much more simple-minded than the concept of ‘singing’. Extensions are a visible part of the world. Concepts are invisible abstracts that help humans to master the real as well as hypothetical worlds. Doesn’t this prove that meaning involves much more than the mastery of mere extensions? Indeed, logical semantics has accepted and in part answered this criticism. The resulting theory is known as possible worlds semantics and I will introduce its main ideas presently. The fact that we grasp concepts on the basis of very limited experience is astonishing and urgently demands scientiWc exploration. It may be worth noticing that the investigation of concepts tacitly relies on the comparison of extensions. How can we test whether two persons have the same concept of ‘singing’? One easy way could consist of confronting them with a variety of events and asking for judgements whether these were singings or not. If these speakers diVer substantially in their judgements, we may express doubts as to whether they indeed share the same concept of ‘singing’. It is an exciting question why two diVerent persons, with diVerent histories and experiences, can ever acquire the same concept at all, and perform, as one side eVect, the extension test with the same outcome. Conceptual linguistics has taken up the exploration of human categorization and its links to human language (see Dirven and Verspoor 1998, Langacker 1990, 1999, JackendoV 1983).
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Logical semantics, however, takes these human abilities as given and focuses on yet another aspect of linguistic activity where Wnite means allow us to master the inWnite: how is it that we can understand an inWnity of sentences on the basis of a Wnite lexicon? What are the modes of semantic combination? Logical semantics attempts to answer these questions with the aim of faithfully reXecting the ability of speakers to say ‘yes’/‘no’ in the right places. Logical semantics acts as if we were already in possession of all the needed concepts, and attempts to model the reactions of speakers to some given linguistic input under all possible circumstances. Indeed, the framework is compatible with any additional theory of concepts, as long as it meets the requirement that sameness of extension is a necessary precondition for sameness of concepts. Let me brieXy survey some ontological assumptions. We have already tacitly assumed that the world contains individuals and objects to be talked about. This seems unproblematic as it matches well with our everyday experience. Proper names are the linguistic items which essentially serve to label individuals. Following Kripke (1972), I adopt a referential theory of names and assume that the meaning of a proper name is the individual (or individual concept) who carries that name. I hence follow Kripke’s objections against a descriptive theory of proper names.1 It will be useful to allow for abstract objects in our ontology. Hence, the domain of individuals comprises things like points of time, time intervals, events, states, and the like. The localization of events relative to given time points and intervals plays a vital role in our thinking and speaking about the world, as evidenced by the rich tense and aspect systems of natural languages. The case study on the emergence of the going to future in English in Chapter 4 will make extended use of times and events. Further prerequisites of the semantic treatment of tense and aspect will be introduced at the beginning of Chapter 4. The last ontological ingredient of logical semantics is possible worlds and situations. They allow us to model the fact that speakers can think and talk about more than only the real world. We provisionally equated the meaning of words with their extensions. The meaning of a noun, for instance, was given by the set of objects to which the noun truthfully applies.2 It could be 1 The descriptive account of names maintains that the meaning of a name is the description of its bearer. The descriptive theory predicts, among other things, that names change their meaning during the lifetime of their bearer. Certainly the cultural or political meaning of a name can change dramatically during the lifetime of its bearer, but the semantic meaning must remain stable. 2 The meaning of a sentence, in this extensional view, would amount to ‘true’ or ‘false’. I did not mention this because it looks so evidently false as to shake the faith of even the most trustful follower of logical semantics. Nevertheless, it is the systematical answer in extensional semantics, and the one that led Gottlob Frege (1964, 1970) to his groundbreaking Wrst formulation of language, logic, and model theory.
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the case, however, that the extensions of two words are the same although the words diVer in meaning. For example, the nouns ‘unicorn’ and ‘wolpertinger’ both have empty extension (i.e. there exist neither unicorns nor wolpertinger in the real world). Still, they are diVerent in meaning. This is not only our intuition, it also gives rise to empirical facts that are on the agenda of the paradigm, for instance sentence pairs as in (3.1). The crucial observation is that (a) and (b) are not synonymous. (3.1) a. John was looking for a unicorn. b. John was looking for a wolpertinger. Logical semantics attempts to capture the truth value behaviour of sentences. Now sentence (3.1a) may be true in a situation where (3.1b) is false. Likewise, (3.1b) may be true in a situation where (a) is false. Hence the two sentences must diVer in meaning (even in the limited sense of ‘meaning’ in truth conditional semantics). The two sentences are built of exactly the same words, composed in exactly the same manner, with the sole diVerence that wolpertinger in (3.1b) replaces unicorn in (3.1a). If we believe that the meaning of a sentence can be derived systematically from the meanings of its parts and the way in which they are composed, we are led to conclude that unicorn and wolpertinger cannot have the same meaning, even though they both have the same extension (namely, zero). The diVerence in meaning between ‘wolpertinger’ and ‘unicorn’ becomes clear once we are thinking about counterfactual, possible object domains. Even though no real animal in this world has ever been either a unicorn or a wolpertinger, we can think of imaginary situations with imaginary animals. Among these, only those that look like horses with a long horn on the forehead would qualify as ‘unicorns’, and only those that look like hares or squirrels with chamois horns, have a goatee, and lay eggs would qualify as ‘wolpertinger’.3 The nouns wolpertinger and unicorn diVer in meaning because they diVer in extension in certain counterfactual worlds. This way of distinguishing between coextensional words with diVerent meanings Wts nicely into the view of logical semantics as a way to represent the potential of real speakers. For my introspective experience it makes little diVerence whether I feel I can distinguish all ‘singings’ in possible situations that I might encounter in the real world, or whether I am conWdent that I can distinguish all ‘singings’ in possible situations even if they never become actual situations in the real world. (After all, I can never be sure whether an 3 Whereby I have revealed the mystery of what a wolpertinger might be: a mythological animal known in the Bavarian Alps. For more information (in German) see www.palaeo.de/palaeo.html.
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imaginary situation will ever become real or not.) The only diVerence between my mastery of ‘unicorn’ and ‘wolpertinger’ on one side and ‘singing’ on the other is that I can rely on real experiences of ‘singing’ in the latter case whereas, in the former cases, I will have to build on my real experiences of ‘long spirally horns’, ‘horses’, ‘chamois horns’, ‘hares’, and ‘eggs’ in order to single out counterfactual unicorns and wolpertinger. These counterfactual extensions are tied together in the intension of a word. Formally, intensions are functions that map all possible situations s onto the respective extension of the word in this situation s. Let us consider some examples. We will use the abbreviations Ds , De , and Dt to stand for the set of actual and possible situations, the set of actual and possible objects, and the set of truth values (i.e. {true, false}). (3.2) The intension of horse is the function fhorse : Ds ! (De ! Dt ) which maps each situation s onto that function fhorse (s) which yields true exactly and only for those objects x in De that are horses in s, and false otherwise. The intension of wolpertinger is the function fwolpertinger : Ds ! (De ! Dt ) which maps each situation s onto that function fwolpertinger (s) which yields true exactly and only for those objects x in De that are wolpertinger in s, and false otherwise. The intension of unicorn is the function funicorn : Ds ! (De ! Dt ) which maps each situation s onto that function funicorn (s) which yields true exactly and only for those objects x in De that are unicorns in s, and false otherwise. These semantic objects can capture the diVerence between the nouns wolpertinger and unicorn. If we consider the above functions for the real world (conventionally notated as wo ) we will Wnd that wo contains neither wolpertinger nor unicorns: funicorn (wo ) ¼ fwolpertinger (wo ) ¼ ø. We can however think of hypothetical worlds w’ that contain wolpertingers and/or unicorns and where funicorn (w’) 6¼ fwolpertinger (w’). Hence the two intentions diVer. The functional format will require a brief explanation. So far we have talked about extensions as sets of objects, sets of pairs of objects, sets of triples of objects, etc. Why do we meet horse functions and wolpertinger functions in (3.2) above? Technically, we make use of the idea that sets can be represented by their characteristic functions: the function fhorse , for instance, does exactly what the purported speaker in command of the meaning of ‘horse’ would do. It yields ‘yes’ (true) when it is presented with a horse, and it yields ‘no’ (false) when it meets anything else. The functional format, systematically extended to more cases, allows us to capture the combinatorial behaviour of the more
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complex parts of a sentence. We can also represent how the meaning of the single word, morpheme, or phrasal element reXects the syntagmatic relations in which the item can be used. What is the intension of a sentence meaning? Let us again start with a simple example, the sentence Lucie is singing. To know the meaning of this sentence is to be able to decide whether it is true or false in a given real or counterfactual situation. The intension of Lucie is singing is hence the function fLucie -is-singing which maps each situation s onto true if the individual named Lucie does sing in s, and onto false otherwise. Generally, the intension of a sentence is the set of those situations where the sentence holds true. At this point, an exciting question arises. In our initial example, I gave you fLucie -is-singing Wxed and ready. Eventually, we would expect that it should derive systematically from the meanings fLucie , fsing , and the way in which they are syntactically combined. (At present, I will ignore further meaning components having to do with tense and aspect. They will be taken up in section 4.3.) Indeed, the approach can capture this composition, and the functional format in (3.2) foreshadows the issues in meaning composition to which we will turn in the next section. So far, we have only been concerned with words, entities, situations, and the yes/no dichotomy. It has become common practice, however, to disentangle the real world, real objects, real properties, and real things on one side, and the world-as-used-in-language on the other side. Formal logic has developed well-deWned ways in which formal languages can refer to formal models. Making use of these techniques, semantics in the tradition of Montague draws the following distinctions: Empirical side (i) Words, phrases, constructions of some natural language (e.g. English at 1990), sentences. are evaluated against (iii) the real world
are translated into
Formal side (ii) expressions of two-sorted type logic L
are evaluated against is modelled (iv) models M of type logic by one among the
The empirical side comprises the observable data. The formal side oVers a way to provide and improve semantic representation. The most important and evident step is for any item in the natural language under consideration to provide a term in logic that captures the semantic behaviour, combinatorial potential, truth value conditions of that item. Another equally fruitful step,
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however, can consist in adjusting the ontological assumptions about the models in (iv). At this point, the semanticist will also have to decide which ones among the inWnitely many objects, facts, and aspects in the real world are recognized and linguistically exploited by human speakers (for the status of models, see Etchemendy 1990 and Zimmermann 1999). I expect that the reader has some acquaintance with propositional and Wrst order predicate logic. The deWnition of Wrst order languages and their evaluation relative to models are recapitulated without further comments in the Appendix for easy reference. In section 3.2, we will have a closer look at higher order functors, their use in the interpretation of sentences, and the logical formulae that stand for such functions (lambda abstraction, application, and lambda conversion). The present introduction of the basic ideas in logical semantics has necessarily been brief and is more in the spirit of a recalling than a serious introduction of the framework. Not only would such a tenet require more space than I have available here, it could moreover at best replicate the elucidating discussions of many aspects of logical semantics oVered by previous writers to which I want to direct the reader. An in-depth and lucid informal introduction to formal semantics can be found in Bach (1989) which is very recommendable as a Wrst reading in logical semantics. The philosophical underpinnings of the model theoretic approach are clearly laid out in Etchemendy (1990) whereas the notion of possible worlds is tied closely to the writings of David Lewis, e.g. in Lewis (1973). Good textbook introductions to the technicalities of formal semantics abound, and the fact that new ones appear on the market at regular intervals, setting diVerent accents in the details but sharing a common core, proves that the Weld has reached mature stability. Dowty, Wall, and Peters (1981) focus on the representation of so-called opaque contexts (intensional verbs like seek and desire, propositional attitudes and expressions of modality like necessary, possibly, can, must, may, etc.). They address the philosophical underpinnings of the extension/intension distinction. More recently, Lo¨bner (2001), de Swart (1998), Cann (1993), and Lohnstein (1996) are very clear and careful textbook introductions. Heim and Kratzer (1998) focus on the interaction between syntactic form and semantic interpretation while Chierchia and McConnellGinet (2000) oVer a more condensed, but also more comprehensive overview of diVerent subWelds in semantics, including the connection to neighbouring disciplines like discourse semantics and pragmatic theory. Lepore (2000) stresses the logical backbone of human speaking and reasoning. Bach (1989) Wnally is still the most recommendable informal overview of aims,
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assumptions, techniques, and results in semantics at a minimum of terminological and notational load. Dramatic advances have been achieved in recent years in the conception of pragmatics. The investigation of discourse coherence and focus has resulted in the insight that the context of utterance—be it in the sense of previous discourse, or in the sense of general situational and epistemic background—has repercussions on the interpretation of language in much more subtle ways than envisaged in the classical work of Austin and Grice. Kamp and Reyle (1993) carefully introduce the reader to the aims and techniques of truth value based discourse semantics. Only a few years later, Kadmon (2001) demonstrates that the notions and techniques of discourse representation theory are much more far-reaching and allow for applications in the pragmatics of dialogue, focus semantics, and presupposition theory. Classical introductions to pragmatics like the revised Levinson (2000) oVer a careful introduction to questions, methodology, and results in the Weld.
3.2 Sentence Meaning: From Parts to Whole In the last section, I presented the core assumption of logical semantics: the meaning of a sentence is represented by the set of situations where the sentence holds true. Perhaps surprisingly, sentence meanings are hence fairly simple semantic objects. Evidently, not all other words and phrases are such that one can plainly answer true or false. Intransitive verbs, for instance, can only be true of an entity, as well as nouns. (Adjectives are a more complicated matter and will be taken up below.) Transitive verbs can only hold true between two entities, and so on. Proper names, on the other hand, refer to individuals (or things) and cannot possibly ever be true just by themselves. Even more complicated are determiners of various kinds—what does some, every, or no require until one reaches a statement which can be true or false?— conjunctions, adverbials of various kinds, tense and aspect morphology, and so on. How can we Wt all these into our overall programme, and do so in a way that matches the syntax of sentences and faithfully reXects the respective judgements of speakers? In answering this question, logical semantics adopts the view that meaning comprises both conceptual content and combinatorial behaviour. In order to capture the semantic contribution of any meaningful part of language—word, morpheme, phrase, etc.—we have to specify the lexical content it will contribute, and how this content is to be combined with the content of other parts of the sentence. Remember the noun meanings that were given
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in example (3.2): the meaning of a noun (e.g. ‘horse’) is a function which is waiting to apply to (a) a possible situation—where are we?—and an individual in that situation—what are we talking about?—in order to reply yes (true: that thing is a horse) or no (false: that thing isn’t a horse). In principle, we could introduce an individual by a proper name and compute something like the proposition ‘in which situations is this individual such that it falls under the predicate’. The syntax of English, however, does not support this kind of combination—a sequence of a noun and a proper name does not qualify as a grammatical sentence. A sequence of a proper name and an intransitive verb does. Let us consider an example: Fido barked. We assume that the meaning of the verb bark is a function fbark that waits to be applied to an individual x and a situation s and will then answer ‘yes’ (true)— x does bark in s—or ‘no’ (false)—x does not bark in s. The denotation of the proper name Fido provides an individual F (let us assume that it’s Fido, our pet dog). If we apply the verb to this individual F, one argument slot of the function is Wlled. The sentence Fido barked denotes the set of situations in which F does bark: if we Wll the missing argument slot in the fbark (FIDO) function with a situation s, fbark (FIDO)(s) ¼ true if the individual called Fido does bark in s and fbark (FIDO)(s) ¼ false otherwise. In order to keep track of the functional application, it is convenient to use logic with lambda abstraction. The complete formal deWnition of lambda logic can be found in the Appendix for easy reference. Here, I will attempt to provide some working ability to read lambda terms and understand the functions denoted by them. One easy way to get to grips with lambda terms is by introducing them for functions that are simple, well known and philosophically unproblematic: in elementary maths classes we Wnd functions like the one in (3.3). (3.3) f (x) ¼ x 2 þ 7 f : x ! x2 þ 7 The function f (given here in two diVerent notations) will take any real number and yield the number’s square, plus 7, as a result. The lambda term in (3.4) is another way of writing this function: (3.4) lx(x 2 þ 7) The lambda preWx (lx) tells you that this function is waiting for one argument, and the term in brackets tells what will happen to that argument, i.e. what the outcome of applying f to x will be. In (3.5), we see three diVerent ways to notate that we have applied f to the number 5 and the result was 32.
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(3.5) a. f (5) ¼ 52 þ 7 ¼ 32 b. f : 5 ! 52 þ 7 ¼ 32 c. [lx(x 2 þ 7)](5) ¼ 52 þ 7 ¼ 32 The term in (3.5c) is an example of functional application: we write the lambda term, followed by the item we want to apply it to. The expression after the Wrst equation sign arises by so-called lambda conversion, i.e. by replacing all instances of x in (x 2 þ 7) by 5.4 In our example, we can reduce this expression further, not because we know lambda logic but because we can perform the respective multiplications and additions. Let us next look at a function with two arguments. The three expressions in (3.6) all denote the same function, mapping a real number x and a positive integer y to another real number x y . (3.6) a. g(x,y) ¼ x y b. g: x ! (y ! x y ) c. lxly(x y ) The function itself does not tell you anything about the domains where you want to apply it, but I restrict the values of y to positive integers to keep matters simple. In (3.7), you see the corresponding ways to state that we applied f to x ¼ 2 and y ¼ 3. (3.7) a. g(2, 3) ¼ 23 ¼ 8 b. g: 2 ! (3 ! 23 ) ¼ 8 c. lxly(x y )(2)(3) ¼ ly(2y )(3) ¼ 23 ¼ 8 The lambda notation in (3.7c) allows us to trace the stepwise application of the function Wrst to 2, and next to 3. In particular, we could stop the computation after applying g to 2, and get the function in (3.8). (3.8) lxly(x y )(2) ¼ ly (2y ) This is the function that maps any number y to the y-th power of 2. The format of lambda terms looks as if the order of arguments is Wxed. This can be inconvenient sometimes. By making use of a trick in lambda logic, it is possible to change the order of arguments. I defer the technicalities to the Appendix, but we will need to apply this change in order at some few places later. 4 In general terms, we replace all those instances of x in the term in brackets which are bound by the lambda operator. The deWnition is given in the Appendix. All examples in the remainder of the book will be set up such that ‘variable x to the left of preWx lx’ and ‘variable x bound by lx’ are interchangeable.
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Let us now turn to a non-mathematical example. Consider a library where all book information is stored in a database. The database retrieval system supplies the function Title which for all signatures x yields the title of the respective book, and the function Signature which for all author names and titles yields the signatures. The following terms denote the respective functions. (3.9) lx(Title(x)) (maps Dsignatures ! Dtitles ) lxly(Signature(x,y)) (maps Dauthors ! (Dtitles ! Dsignatures ) ) The application in (3.11) shows an example of functional application and lambda conversion in the database of the Konstanz university library: (3.10) lxly(Signature(x,y)) (Gustaf Stern) (Meaning and Change of Meaning) ¼ ly(Signature(Gustaf Stern,y)) (Meaning and Change of Meaning) ¼ Signature(Gustaf Stern, Meaning and Change of Meaning) ¼ eng 233/s92 Note again that, in computing the respective steps, we pass by the function ly(Signature(Gustaf Stern,y)) which yields for all titles of Gustaf Stern the respective signatures. (Technically speaking, this is a partial function. It does not make sense for titles that were not written by Gustav Stern.) We are now prepared to come back to our initial example, the computation of the meaning of Fido barks. The verb bark denotes the following function, where conventionally, i stands for the situation variable (‘index’) and x, y, z, . . . are used for common objects and individuals: (3.11) lilx(Bark(i, x)) In order to combine this function with the denotation of the proper name Fido, we do functional application. We will have to use the trick above in order to pass by the situation argument. In (3.12), I show the full derivation: (3.12) lilx(Bark(i, x)) (j)(Fido) ¼ lx(Bark(j, x)) (Fido) ¼ Bark(j, Fido) Lambda abstraction over j: lj(Bark(j, Fido)) The last term denotes the function which takes any possible situation s and yields true if and only if the referent of Fido does bark in s. The derivation in
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(3.12) corresponds to the paraphrase in prose at the beginning of section 3.2. Let me next go through an example with a transitive verb. In the sample derivation in (3.14/15), I moreover want to introduce the format in which word meanings and meaning combination will be notated from now on. Words in some natural language are notated in italics. The brackets ½½ yield, for any word or phrase of a natural language, the denotation of that word or phrase. These denotations are given in terms of lambda logic which stand for the respective entities and functions. (3.13)
Fido hates Pussy ½½ Fido ¼ Fido ½½ Pussy ¼ Pussy ½½ hate(s) ¼ lilylx(Hate(i,x,y)) combine (b) and (c) (trick: circumventing li) lilylx(Hate(i,x,y)) (j)(Pussy) ¼ lylx(Hate(j,x,y)) (Pussy) ¼ lx(Hate(j,x,Pussy)) Lambda Abstraction: ½½ hate(s) Pussy ¼ ljlx(Hate(j,x,Pussy))
(3.14) a. b. c. d.
(3.15)
Combine (14a) and (14d) ljlx(Hate(j,x,Pussy)) (i)(Fido) ¼ lx(Hate(i,x,Pussy)) (Fido) ¼ (Hate(i,Fido,Pussy)) ½½ Fido hates Pussy ¼ li(Hate(i,Fido,Pussy))
The resulting object is that function from possible situations to truth values that yields true for exactly those situations in which the individual called Fido hates the individual called Pussy. In other words: a speaker who understands sentence (3.13) will agree exactly in those situations where Fido hates Pussy. The combination of the meanings of two items commonly proceeds by functional application. The recurrent circumvention of the situation argument i which may look a bit dirty here follows very systematic patterns (see e.g. Dowty, Wall, and Peters 1981). However, this might be a good place to comment on the Wxed order of arguments that is inherent in a lambda term and the question whether this is appropriate or rather a hindrance in the interpretation of natural language sentences. As we noted already in example (3.7), the function denoted by a lambda term expects its arguments in a Wxed order. In natural language semantics, this fact results in the requirement that the arguments of the verb must be combined with the verb in the correct order in order not to end up in the wrong place. If we applied the proper
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names in (3.13) in a diVerent order, we would compute the proposition ‘Pussy hates Fido’—which certainly does not match the content of the sample sentence. Assuming a Wxed word order is adequate for languages like English. Languages with free word order and a rich inXectional system like Latin, for instance, do not exhibit this correlation. Is the Wxed order of arguments an artefact of the formalism we use? Does it reXect facts about natural language? Does it perhaps reXect the properties of some but not all natural languages? There are several answers that were advanced in the semantic literature. Heim and Kratzer (1998) propose an intricate system of semantic interpretation which works on the assumption of a Wxed underlying word order which can be changed at the surface, but which oVers the basis for an ‘orderly’ semantic composition of the sentence material. They argue that this system correctly predicts facts about quantiWer scope and unacceptability of binding relations that go far beyond the basic data, and conclude that the account indeed reXects deep facts about the organization of languages like English or German. A completely diVerent kind of solution has been advanced in Krifka (1992). He proposes a neo-Davidsonian event based theory where grammatical cases are directly interpreted in terms of thematic roles in an event or situation. This approach is suited for putative languages with completely free word order. Similar solutions are embodied in formats in computational linguistics like HPSG or LFG. Let us now turn to some more advanced examples that involve quantiWcational determiners. What is the semantic function of a determiner? To put it simply, a determiner like every or a needs a noun and a verb phrase and makes a quantiWcational statement that relates the two. A simple example is given in (3.16). (3.16) A dog is barking. This sentence should yield a proposition that can be paraphrased roughly as ‘there is something in this situation, this something is a dog, and it is barking’. An present, we will still treat is-barking as an unanalyzed semantic unit.5 The determiner a contributes the existential quantiWcation, while noun and verb contribute properties of the referent. This organization is captured in the following denotations: (3.17) a. ½½ is-barking ¼ lilx(Bark(i, x)) b. ½½ dog ¼ lilx (Dog(i, x)) 5
In section 4.3 I will introduce the semantic distinction between tense (past, present, future), reference point (past perfect, future perfect, present perfect), and aspect (progressive, non-progressive) and their interaction.
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c. ½½ a ¼ lPlQlj(9z (P(j)(z) ^ Q(j)(z)) The new thing about the function denoted by a is that it takes properties as arguments. This is vaguely signalled by my use of the variables P and Q instead of x, y, or z—in type logic, one would use variables with a type index. This index acts as a label that speciWes the kind of argument that can be inserted.6 The steps in (3.18) trace the computation of the subject NP: (3.18) ½½ a dog ¼ lPlQlj(9z(P(j)(z) ^ Q(j)(z))) (lilx(Dog(i, x))) ¼ lQlj(9z (lilx(Dog(i, x))(j)(z) ^ Q(j)(z))) ¼ lQlj(9z lx(Dog(j, x)(z) ^ Q(j)(z))) ¼ lQlj(9z (Dog(j, z) ^ Q(j)(z))) What may look puzzling at Wrst is that we apply a function to something which is itself a function. The denotation of dog Wlls the place reserved by variable P in the determiner term. It can then apply to the individual variables j and z which are waiting to be inserted as arguments. The last line in (3.18) allows no more lambda reductions. We can now combine it with the verb. (3.19) ½½ a dog is-barking ¼ lQlj(9z(Dog(j, z) ^ Q(j)(z))) (lilx(Bark(i, x))) ¼ lj(9z(Dog(j, z) ^ lilx(Bark(i, x))(j)(z))) ¼ lj(9z(Dog(j, z) ^ lx (Bark(j, x))(z))) ¼ lj(9z(Dog(j, z) ^ (Bark(j, z))) The resulting lambda term stands for the function which for any situation s yields true exactly if there is something z which is a dog in s and barks in s. Note that the determiner took care of the situation variable of both properties in the combination. This is not only convenient, it is also necessary because we have to make sure that the being-a-dog of z and the barking of z are considered in the same situation. For sentence (3.16) to be true, it is not suYcient that something which is a dog might bark, or something barks which could have been a dog. It turns out that the proposed meaning for a Wts nicely in the whole plethora of determiner meanings. In (3.20) I summarize a collection of common determiners plus their meanings. In reading such more complex functional terms, it is usually convenient to keep in mind which variable in the term corresponds to which syntactic constituent in the sentence which contributes the respective property. In (3.20), you might read P as ‘sister noun’ and Q as ‘verb phrase’ or ‘rest of the sentence’. 6
In our example, we would use variables of type (s, (e,t)), for instance x1,(s,(e,t) ) , x2,(s,(e,t) ) .
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(3.20) ½½ every ¼ lPlQlj(8z( P(j)(z) ! Q(j)(z))) ½½ no ¼ lPlQlj(:9z( P(j)(z) ^ Q(j)(z))) ½½ three ¼ lPlQlj (9z1 9z2 9z3 (z1 6¼ z2 ^ z1 6¼ z3 ^ z2 6¼ z3 ^ P(j)(z1 ) ^ P(j)(z2 ) ^ P(j)(z3 ) ^ Q(j)(z1 ) ^ Q (j)(z2 ) ^ Q (j)(z3 ))) The number term three shows how we can represent the notion of counting. Other quantiWers, however, state something about the proportions of sets of arbitrary size. In order to deal with these, we have to consider the cardinalities of sets. For any set A, jAj is to stand for the size of A, i.e. how many elements A contains. Commonly, we can think of A as a Wnite set. Using the cardinality of sets, we can capture the meaning of even more quantiWers:7 (3.21) ½½ some ¼ lPlQlj(j lz(P(j)(z)) j $ 2 ) ½½ half of the ¼ lPlQlj(jlz (P(j)(z) ^ Q(j)(z))j j lz(P(j)(z)) j ¼ 1/2) ½½ most ¼ lPlQlj(jlz( P(j)(z) ^ Q(j)(z))j j lz(P(j)(z)) j > 1/2) You will have noted that the logical type of determiners is neatly designed to Wt subject noun phrases. The question arises: what happens to a noun phrase which attempts to combine with a transitive or ditransitive verb? The immediate problem is that the NP waits for a one-place property while transitive verbs denote properties of higher arities. Should we diVerentiate subject determiners from object determiners and indirect object determiners to cope with these cases? This would certainly be an odd proposal. A noun phrase should mean the same, no matter whether it is subject or object of a verb. More importantly, the problem of combination seems to arise for structural reasons and hence should be solved in a principled manner and not by a case-by-case repair for each grammatical position and quantiWer separately. All solutions of this dilemma that I know of make use of the lambda abstraction trick which we know from previous examples (Krifka 1992 being the isolated exception). It has moreover become good practice to implement this process overtly, as for example in Krifka (1993). Hence I will adopt this strategy, even though the process might look a bit tedious at Wrst. Let us go through an example with a quantifying NP in both subject and object position. (3.22) Each dog owns a feeding bowl. We have the following basic denotations available: 7 The discussion of determiners is oversimpliWed here, because I do not touch upon the presuppositions of quantiWers or—relatedly—the distinction between weak and strong quantiWers. Some of these issues will receive closer attention in Chapter 7 where we deal with the grammaticalization of a German determiner. For reference, see Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet (2000: ch. 9).
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(3.23) ½½ each ¼ lPlQlj(8w( P(j)(w) ! Q(j)(w))) ½½ dog ¼ lilx (Dog(i, x)) ½½ own ¼ lilxly(Own(i, x, y)) ½½ a ¼ lPlQlj (9z(P(j)(z) ^ Q(j)(z))) ½½ feeding bowl ¼ lilx(Feedingbowl(i, x)) The NP meanings compose from noun meaning and determiner meaning by functional application as in the previous examples: (3.24) a. ½½ each dog ¼ lQlj(8w(Dog(j, w) ! Q(j)(w))) b. ½½ a feeding bowl ¼ lQlj(9z(Feeding Bowl(j, z) ^ Q(j)(z))) The hard step in the derivation consists in combining object NP and verb in a sensible manner. Given that the NP is waiting for a one-place property, we need to turn the transitive verb into a one-place property of the right kind, and in a way which allows us to recover the subject variable. The respective steps are explicated in (3.25): (3.25) apply verb to ‘dummy’ variables (starred): lilxly (Own(i, x, y)) (j*)(x*) ¼ ly(Own(j*, x*, y)) abstract over situation variable: lj*ly(Own(j*, x*, y)) The result in (3.25) is the property of being owned by some unnamed x*. It is of the proper kind to combine with the object noun phrase denotation, leaving it open to address x* later. This is shown in (3.26). (3.26) ½½ a feeding bowl (½½ own ) ¼ lQlj(9z(FeedingBowl(j, z) ^ Q(j)(z)) (lj*ly(Own(j*, x*, y)))) ¼ lj(9z(Feeding Bowl(j, z) ^ lj*ly(Own(j*, x*, y))(j)(z))) ¼ lj(9z(Feeding Bowl(j, z) ^ ly(Own(j, x*, y))(z))) ¼ lj(9z(Feeding Bowl(j, z) ^ Own(j, x*, z))) We can now revive the subject argument by lambda abstraction over x*. Note that the world index once again causes additional work. (3.27) ½½ own a feeding bowl ¼ lj*lx*[lj(9z(Feeding Bowl(j, z) ^ Own(j, x*, z))) (j*)] ¼ lj*lx*[9z(Feeding Bowl(j*, z) ^ Own(j*, x*, z))] ‘property that applies in any situation to exactly those individuals that own some feeding bowl’ Finally, we can now apply the subject NP to this property. To get a clearer idea of what is going on, remember that this corresponds to the combination of
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subject NP and verb in example (3.19). The verb denotation there corresponds to the VP denotation in the present case. (3.28) ½½ each dog (½½ own a feeding bowl ) ¼ lQlj (8w(Dog(j, w) ! Q(j)(w))) (lj*lx* [9z(FeedingBowl(j*, z) ^ Own(j*, x*, z)) ]) ¼ lj(8w(Dog(j, w) ! lj*lx*[9z(FeedingBowl (j*, z) ^ Own(j*, x*, z))](j)(w)) ¼ lj(8w(Dog(j, w) ! lx* [9z(FeedingBowl(j, z) ^ Own(j, x*, z)) ](w))) ¼ lj(8w(Dog(j, w) ! [9z(FeedingBowl(j, z) ^ Own(j, w, z)) ])) The last line represents the result of the computation. It can be paraphrased as follows: the sentence each dog owns a feeding bowl is true in a situation s exactly if for all w that are dogs in situation s there exist objects z which are feeding bowls such that the respective dog-in-s, w, owns the feeding bowl z in s. In simpler terms, the function in (3.28) will say yes in situations that look like in (a) and no in situations that look like in (b) in Fig. 1.
a.
b.
Fig. 1
We have now covered most of the ground of the present section. The last example has shown how denotations of parts of the sentence can be composed in a mechanical (even though clumsy) manner to yield the overall proposition expressed by the sentence. More importantly, we have encountered determiners which organize the combination of higher order parts of the sentence (i.e. go beyond the mere application of a property to an individual, as is well known from predicate logic). This will become a recurring theme in following chapters: words can have a meaning which consists in combining other parts (of meaning) in the sentence and contributing another bit of meaning themselves. The meaning contribution of determiners consisted in the quantiWcational statement in question. Words like modals and auxiliaries, tense constructions and the like, contribute information about the time at which some event happens that is described by other parts of the sentence. Other items contribute to the overall meaning of a sentence in even more intricate ways.
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To show another case where higher order arguments play a role, consider the example in (3.29): (3.29) Bo believes that each dog owns a feeding bowl. It might be satisfying to see that our eVorts have laid the ground for an extremely simple semantic treatment of propositional attitude verbs as in this example. The verb believe expresses a relation between the subject (Bo) and the proposition expressed by the embedded sentence. This latter is exactly the thing which we computed in (3.28). Hence, the meaning in (3.29) comes down to the proposition in (3.30); I give you the meanings of the two new words, but leave out the details of the combination. (3.30) a. ½½ Bo ¼ B b. ½½ believe ¼ lilplx (Believe(i, x, p)) ‘in world i, subject x stands in the Believe relation to proposition p’ c. ½½ (that) each dog owns a feeding bowl ¼ lj (8w(Dog(j, w) ! [9z(FeedingBowl(j, z) ^ Own(j, w, z))])) ‘set of worlds j such that all Dogs in j Own some Feeding Bowl z in j’ d. ½½ believe that each dog owns a feeding bowl ¼ lilx (Believe(i, x, lj (8w(Dog(j, w) ! [9z(FeedingBowl(j, z) ^ Own(j, w, z)) ])))) e. ½½ Bo believes that each dog owns a feeding bowl ¼ li (Believe(i, B, lj(8w(Dog(j, w) ! [9z(FeedingBowl(j, z) ^ Own(j, w, z)) ])))) The Wnal line can be paraphrased as ‘the proposition that is true in all worlds where the person called Bo stands in the Believe relation to the proposition in (c), namely that each dog owns a feeding bowl’. In a similar way, sentences about other propositional attitudes can be captured, like Bo believes he owns a dog, Bo wants to Wnd a wolpertinger or even stacked cases like Sue knows that Bo believes he owns a wolpertinger. Yet, propositional attitude verbs will not be of core interest in the remainder of the book. Instead I want to relate to a serious objection that has been raised against logical semantics as a framework to represent semantic composition. Eve Sweetser states that ‘compositionality is a central fact of language, and one which has been given inadequate treatment in formal semantic models’ (Sweetser 1999: 129). She then proposes an alternative treatment for semantic composition on the basis of blending (Turner and Fauconnier 1995). SpeciWcally, Sweetser takes the semantics of adjectival modiWation and noun–noun compounding as her starting point and reports that there is ‘little agreement
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among linguists as to any general treatment of the semantics of adjectivenoun modiWcations or noun-noun compounds’ (p. 130). However, her criticisms are addressed to semantic accounts for adjectives of more than thirty years ago (Vendler 1967) where adjectival modiWcation is restricted to intersective modiWcation (‘a red ball is something that is red and is a ball’). It is certainly correct that only a very small part of adjectives follow this simplistic pattern. Consequently, truth conditional semantics has since advanced beyond this stage. Degree adjectives (large, small), temporal modiWers (former, late), intentional adjectives (alleged, likely), and other classes of adjectives have received sophisticated treatments which, in turn, helped to deepen our understanding of the interaction between diVerent words in a construction, and construction and non-linguistic context (for instance Kamp 1975, Stechow 1984, Bierwisch et al. 1984, Bierwisch and Lang 1989, Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 1990: 369 V., Do¨lling 1995, 1997). In view of the fact that adjectival modiWcation is frequently used to argue in favour of the inadequacy of truth value based semantic theory, it seems to oVer a good opportunity to exemplify the extensions and additional features that were implemented in truth conditional semantics from the early days of Tarsky and Vendler. While many of the details will not be speciWcally taken up in later chapters, the brief overview of adjective semantics may yet be suited to strengthen the reader’s faith in the power of truth based semantic theory. A Wrst observation that shows the complexity of adjectives is that the interpretation of adjectives depends crucially on the semantics of the noun they modify. Examples like the ones below illustrate the eVect. (3.31) a big mouse (is still a small animal) red wine (might still be a brown liquid) a likely winner (is not yet a winner) an alleged gun (is not a gun) What the examples in (3.31) show clearly is that adjectives and nouns will only in very rare cases combine by mere property intersection (a red apple ¼ something which is red and which is an apple). It was found that a wide range of adjectives evaluate the object under consideration relative to a given scale, ordering objects along some conceptual dimension (size, weight, hardness, but also more subjective quality scales like loveliness, sweetness, odiousness, etc.). Interestingly, recent research has proved that all these adjectives behave very similarly, apart from the wide choice of scales they can address (Stechow 1984). The current view of degree adjectives is hence that they will require a contextually given scale relative to which an evaluation
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is made, and contribute in a systematic fashion the value of a given object on this scale. The conceptual dimension of the scale is usually part of the meaning of the adjective, but the endpoints of the scale (and hence the question whether the object ranges high or low on that scale) are determined by considering the meaning of the noun. The schema in (3.32) shows a simple implementation of this idea which comes up to the criticisms in Sweetser (1999: 130 f.). (3.33) oVers an illustration. (3.32) ½½ degree adjective ¼ lilPlx.( P(i, x) ^ value-on-adjective-scale(x) ¼ d ^d is high/average/low8 in comparison to the range of d’ of values-on-adjective-scale-of y for things y which are P) (3.33) Example: heavy ½½ heavy ¼ lilPlx.( P(i, x) ^ weight-of(x) ¼ d ^ d is fairly high in comparison to the range of d’¼weight-of(y) for things y which are P ) The argument P stands for the noun to be combined with the adjective. Intuitively, the adjective will wait for the range of objects under debate before it can say whether something is heavy or light, small or big, red or not red, in comparison to these. In consequence, one and the same individual can be a heavy boy and still not a heavy male. Intensional adjectives like alleged or likely require a diVerent treatment. Likely makes a statement about the probability of various epistemic possibilities. Mrs Fortescue is a likely visitor of the exhibition expresses that among the epistemically possible courses of the future (¼ possible future situations, seen from our present real situation), the actual course of events is more likely among those which have the property ‘Mrs Fortescue is a visitor of the exhibition’ than not. This contribution is captured in the following term. (3.34) lPlxli( 8s ( s is-possible-future-of i ^ :P(s,x) ! 9s’ ( s’ is-possible-future-of i ^ P(s’,x) ^ s’ is-more-likely-than s ))) (3.34) can be paraphrased as follows: ‘Give me a property P and an object x and world i, and I state that at i, the most likely courses of future events are
8
Depending on the adjective.
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such that P(x) holds true there. There might be possible future courses of events where P(x) does not hold, but seen from i, they are unlikely to occur.’ You might object that likely cannot only refer to likely courses of the future, but also to reality insofar as the speaker is uncertain: ‘Here you see Mrs Fortescue, the likely winner of yesterday’s election.’ This observation matches well with the insight that modal expressions generally make a Wxed meaning contribution relative to a given range of modal alternatives (the modal base). Kratzer’s classical treatment of modality in terms of possible worlds semantics (Kratzer 1978, 1981, 1991) demonstrates lucidly how the appropriate choice of modal base, ordering source, and content of modal expression conspire to capture the meaning of modal expressions, and her theory can be applied to the representation of likely, improbable, and similar examples (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 1990: 271 f.). In fact, there is a striking parallel between the spirit of Kratzer’s account of modal expressions and the diachronic facts about meaning extensions of modal verbs (see Traugott 1989, Sweetser 1990, Fritz and Gloning 1997). On the basis of purely synchronic considerations, Kratzer proposed a theory that allows for variation exactly along the dimension that is empirically manifest in diachronic research on modals. An exploration of this striking analogy will yet have to be left for future study. Let us Wnally turn to another type of intensional adjective. Adjectives like alleged make a condensed propositional attitude statement about what someone believes (remember example (3.29)). An alleged terrorist is a person such that someone believes that this person is a terrorist. In the normal case, we will even have contextual information about who this someone might be (for instance the CIA, the press, or our next-door neighbour) and ‘someone’ in that sense behaves like a speciWc indeWnite. Once more it is not diYcult to cast this meaning contribution of the adjective into an appropriate functional format. A paraphrase is added in (3.36).9 (3.35)
lilPlx[ 9 y Believe(i, y, li*(P(i*, x) ) ) ]
(3.36) Give me a property P and an individual x. There is someone y in world i who believes that the proposition ‘x is a P’ holds true. In all cases, we make crucial use of the idea that the adjective does not express a property by itself. Instead, the adjective takes its sister noun as an integral part of the overall assertion it makes. Once more, we can fruitfully exploit
9
I suppress a representation of speciWc indeWnites. It is the subject of ongoing debate what a semantic treatment of speciWcity should look like, and while several sophisticated proposals are on the market, it would not be helpful at this point to burden the text with the details of any one of these.
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the powerful functional structure which lies at the basis of our semantic theory and, at the same time, make intricate use of intensionality. This sketchy and brief introduction into the semantics of adjectives, incomplete as it may be, should illustrate that truth conditional semantics allows for, and indeed aims at, a much more Wne-grained representation of meaning than work in the early days of the discipline may have foreshadowed. Sweetser (1999) favours an account of semantic composition in terms of blending. The potential of the approach is convincingly demonstrated in her discussion of the adjective safe. The adjective safe appears to refer to a conceptualization of potential danger and states the exclusion of potential danger in various ways: a safe baby is a baby well protected from dangers, a safe fence is a fence that protects well from danger, and a safe knife is a knife that itself does not constitute a danger. Sweetser argues that diVerent nouns refer to objects that can be integrated in a danger frame in diVerent ways— hence the diVerent readings. We should not, however, overlook that other adjectives are less polysemous and do not allow for as many readings as there are possible corresponding blends of adjective frame and noun meaning. The antonyms of safe refer to the same potential danger frame and yet, diVerent adjectives express diVerent blends: the potentially dangerous object must be described as harmful or dangerous, the potentially endangered object as exposed or vulnerable, and the non-trustworthy barrier in-between can be unsafe. While blending seems to be a successful technique to spot potential readings of adjectives, an extra step is required in order to single out those among them that are in fact part of the lexicon. In summary, truth value based semantic theory found an important complementation in conceptual semantics, and the latter brought up issues and demonstrated regularities that had never previously been in focus. However, the best of all possible semantic theories should combine insights of logics and cognitive science rather than rejecting one in favour of the other. In recent years, interesting attempts to develop integrated theories have been proposed like Kamp and Partee (1995), and van der Does and Lambalgen (2000). On the other hand, the cognitive semantic theory of JackendoV (1983) shows many striking isomorphisms to Tarsky-style semantics with additional powerful cognitive notions integrated (see also JackendoV ’s own comments in JackendoV 1998). A faithful model of the semantic abilities of human speakers eventually will have to integrate conceptual knowledge, logical reason, and combinatorial power in one system—like humans themselves.
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3.3 Beyond Literal Meaning By uttering a sentence, speakers commonly want to convey information to the hearer. Yet they rarely ever literally say what they mean: there is a notorious gap between literal meaning of utterance and information conveyed. This observation gains relevance for our present enterprise in that we have seen in the previous chapters that reanalysis occurs in the tension between literal meanings and understood meanings of utterances. The present section serves to highlight this move and to introduce some terminology for diVerent kinds of relations which can hold between propositions. Once again, I will conWne myself to a survey of important notions and ideas. Levinson (2000) is an excellent source to Wll in and appreciate the complexity of the details that are missing in the present overview. Levinson not only develops his view of the semantic-pragmatic component with an explicit interest in language change and typological universals, his framework is designed moreover as a conservative extension of truth conditional semantics and therefore compatible with the present view. Most importantly, he takes care to relate various kinds of logical inferencing to the terminology that was developed in pragmatic theorizing. The resulting picture exhibits a close-knit web of kinds of entailments that speakers and hearers use in order to spell out the meagre literal content of an utterance into a rich piece of conveyed information. The most stable way in which two propositions can be related is that one logically entails the other. We say that a proposition f logically entails another proposition c if and only if wherever f is true, c must hold true as well. A collection of simple cases is given in (3.37). (3.37) a. someone ate the cake and drank the wine entails someone ate the cake someone drank the wine b. Students pay half price, and Sue is a student entails Sue pays half price. These entailments, trivial as they may look, pose a Wrst empirical test for the adequacy of semantic representations. Assume that we have proposed the semantic representations ½½S1 and ½½S2 for natural language sentences S1 and S2 . Assume further that ½½S1 logically entails ½½S2 . And assume Wnally that empirically speaking, that is in terms of our intuitions, the real sentence S1 does not entail anything about S2 . Then our representation must be wrong.
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We already saw this principle at work in section 3.2 where we discussed adjectives like likely or alleged. Evidently, a simple intersective interpretation of such adjectives would be wrong because it would make the wrong predictions about entailments: a fake gun is not something which is a gun and which is fake but, on the contrary, is not a gun (but looks like one). This was one reason to propose a more intricate representation for fake. Logical entailments can also serve to evaluate the quality of a given semantic representation in more subtle ways. If two competing semantic representations are such that one, but not the other, yields the required logical entailments in an eVortless way, then this account is—all things being equal—to be preferred. Considerations like these were the strongest argument in favour of introducing an event argument of the verb. So far, we have represented verbs by relations between those participants which have an overt reXex in sentences (being introduced by the nominal arguments of the verb). Practically all recent semantic theories, however, assume that verbs relate participants to the eventuality in which they engage. The verb eat, for example, will relate an eater and the food to an event in which the former eats the latter. The verb laugh relates the laughing agent to the activity of laughing, the verb go relates the moving agent and a path (which can be speciWed by prepositional phrases or measure phrases, for instance) to an event of going. The reiWcation of actions and events and their application in natural language semantics dates back to Donald Davidson (Davidson 1967). The idea initially was questioned by those who were hesitant to populate ontology with abstract objects of a dubious nature. However, semantic research over the last twenty years has shown that an eventbased verb semantics will lead to a coherent notion of events and yields a wide range of correct logical entailments which otherwise would have required additional meaning postulates (see summary in Eckardt 2002). In Chapter 4, we will see more of events and their relation to times when we delve into the representation of tense and aspect. Logical entailments reXect the mere logical connections between sentences. Frequently, however, a sentence implies another sentence on the basis of contingent facts about the word meanings involved. Consider the sentence pairs in (3.38) to (3.41): (3.38) (3.39)
a. A woman sat on the sofa b. A person sat on the sofa
a. b. (3.40) a. b.
Anne climbed the tree Anne was on the tree Sue was reading a book Sue was awake
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a. Alfred did not eat b. Alfred did not eat anything
Intuitively, the Wrst sentences imply the second sentences in all cases, due to the meanings of the words involved. We know that (3.38a) implies (3.38b) because we know that all women are persons, and likewise for climbing something and being on this something, reading and being awake, and eating and eating something. Logical semantics reXects this kind of knowledge by meaning postulates. These can be thought of as a set of lexical axioms which collect knowledge of the average speaker about how various words relate to each other. The boundary between knowledge about word meanings and knowledge about the world is notoriously vague. For instance, the relation between woman and person would commonly be viewed as lexical knowledge (hyperonymy). The fact that activities of reading commonly presuppose the reader to be awake, in contrast, looks more like a general insight about the way the world works rather than a lexical deWnition. One would certainly not start to explain the meaning of reading by pointing out that it requires awakeness. Still, this kind of knowledge drives our use of language: if we were told. (3.42) Sue was lying asleep on the sofa, reading ‘Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte’ we would immediately understand (a) that this must be an ironic statement which cannot literally be true and (b) that this might be a witty way to state that Sue was not very much interested in Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. The conclusion (b) lies in the realm of Gricean inferencing and is driven by pragmatic processes to which we will come presently. But the Wrst indication that something is wrong about sentence (3.42) is based on knowledge about awakeness and reading. Another complex of questions has to do with the degree of expertise which must be reXected by a faithful semantic modelling. Not every speaker masters every aspect of word-and-world-knowledge, and even so they may all be competent speakers. Putnam’s ideas about the linguistic division of labour (Putnam 1975) in part answer these questions. Putnam suggests a sociolinguistic network of speakers and experts who decide in cases where ordinary speakers fail to be able to supply the necessary expertise in some branch of science. In what follows, we will meet only very innocent lexical meanings which require no particular expertise of any kind. Word-and-world knowledge is thought to mirror hard logical consequences of sentences. However, the common interpretation of sentences will
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usually require a vast amount of reasoning on the basis of stereotypes and prototypes. If someone cries the bird has escaped its cage, you will automatically assume that the bird is of the Xying kind, and understand the warning also as a request to close the window. In coming to this conclusion, you will have used default logic (see Ginsberg 1994 for an introduction). A default inference in non-monotonic logic is an inference which holds true in the ‘common’ case, but can be defeated if you Wnd yourself in a ‘special’ case. Take our example. Getting information about a bird gone loose, you will reason ‘birds can Xy’, ‘a caged bird is a pet bird which should stay in the house’, ‘an open window allows Xying animals to Xee’, hence: ‘close the window!’ I want to concentrate on the Wrst sequence of inferences, leaving the command for action aside. If you read ‘birds can Xy’ as ‘all birds can Xy’, it is certainly wrong. After all, there are penguins and ostriches, and even our bird in question might be a clipped duck which is unable to Xy. All these counterexamples however do not shake one’s faith in the truth of birds can Xy. The Weld of nonmonotonic logic was developed in order to capture defeasible laws like birds can Xy. Such laws can be combined with propositions like Tweety is a bird to derive that Tweety can Xy. This will remain a valid conclusion unless one gets additional information that Tweety happens to be an ostrich. In that case, Tweety does not need to Xy, yet the defeasible law that birds can Xy will still remain a valid part of our world knowledge. Even though non-monotonic logic, somewhat monotonously, presents itself as the investigation of non-Xying birds, the emerging formalism has a wide range of exciting applications in natural language semantics. It can capture knowledge about what the prototype of a kind looks like or what the typical scene-of-event looks like. It can capture the fact that a hearer will, in the typical case, create an inner picture of the objects and events he or she is told about which can be much more speciWc than what the narrative itself would supply. Non-monotonic logic is hence another technique that allows us to proWt from the rich wealth of literature in cognitive semantics, speciWcally the investigation of prototypes and frames that has emerged over the last decades (starting with Taylor 1989 and Fillmore 1985). The mere technique of non-monotonic reasoning will not in and of itself provide any insights about prototypes and stereotypes. It does however allow us to integrate such insights into an overall semantic theory in a conservative way. Once more, logical semantics and conceptual semantic knowledge present themselves as complementary, not contradictory, branches of semantics. On the basis of logical entailment, word-and-world knowledge, and default inferencing we can reXect a considerable portion of everyday reasoning in communication.
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Entailment, world knowledge, and default inferencing are important factors in the kind of meaning change that I want to address. Many of the inferences in reanalysis that have been characterized as ‘pragmatic’ in the literature (see Traugott and Ko¨nig 1991, Hopper and Traugott 1993 among others) are in fact default inferences. Let me take the going to construction (in the movement sense) as an illustration. Assume that you are presented with utterance (3.43). (3.43) Isabel: ‘I am going to visit my aunt.’ If you believe that Isabel made a true statement, then you will be licensed to draw the default inference that Isabel will visit her aunt soon. You can do this because you know the meaning of the going to construction, and you know how such going-to-do’s end in the common case—even though you likewise will be aware that Isabel may well be distracted on her way and end up in a pub rather than at her aunt’s. Moreover, the inferences are valid no matter what the communicative intentions of the interlocutors were in (3.43). Isabel may have made her utterance to inform you that she will be away for the next few hours, and will not be able to take the phone call that you are urgently waiting for. Let me turn to a second type of implicit information that will be of some importance in later chapters, the presupposed information. Presuppositions of a sentence are facts that must hold true before that sentence can be meaningful at all. In terms of truth values, presuppositions make themselves noticed by a curious kind of eVect. Let me give an example. (3.44) Cleo stopped smoking last Sunday. If (3.44) is true then we know in particular that ‘Cleo smoked (until last Sunday)’ must be true likewise. Surprisingly, however, the same extra information is implicit in the negation of (3.44): (3.45) Cleo did not stop smoking (last Sunday). Sentence (3.45) likewise seems to imply that (3.46) must be true. Intuitively, the question whether Cleo stopped smoking or not only makes sense against the background knowledge that Cleo was a smoker. (3.46) Cleo smoked (until last Sunday). We need to explicate that (3.46) is a precondition on contexts in which a speaker can meaningfully assert either (3.45) or (3.46). The special status of presuppositions was implemented in truth value based semantic accounts that treat the meaning of sentences in terms of their context change potential
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(summarized e.g. in Kadmon 2001). While I will not add the extra complexities that come along with this move, we will in the following make a distinction between presuppositions and entailments. One Wnal fact about presuppositions will be relevant in later chapters. Ideally, a sentence may not be uttered by a speaker unless he or she is sure that the hearer is in possession of the required presupposed information. In practice, if a hearer gets (3.44) and did not know about Cleo’s smoking, he or she can do several things: either the presupposition can be questioned or even objected to: ‘She smoked? I was not aware of that!’ Or else, the sentence is addressed—accepted or rejected—without mention of the presupposition. In that case, the hearer has accommodated the presupposition, taken it for granted, as an extra bit of information that was implicit in the utterance. Sometimes it can be a convenient means for speakers to convey information by way of presupposition rather than in a direct manner: (3.47) I am sorry that I cannot come to your party! (3.47) presupposes that the speaker will not come to the party.10 On the other hand, it is sometimes necessary to refute a presupposition altogether. Consider example (3.48). If you were asked this question and had, in fact, not stolen the chocolate at all, you would not be satisWed to answer with either ‘yes’ or ‘no’: (3.48) Do you regret having stolen the chocolate? To summarize: presuppositions of a sentence S are pieces of information that need to be given in a context where S is asserted or denied in a meaningful way. If speakers are confronted with the sentence and did not previously know, they can accommodate the presuppositions, that is, they can update their knowledge in a suitable way. Let me turn to a Wnal branch of pragmatics: the laws of cooperative communication. In real communication, the hearer considers questions like ‘why did the speaker tell me so?’, ‘can this be true?’, ‘what could the speaker have uttered instead?’ under the assumption that the speaker observes the general maxims of cooperative communication. What does a speaker want to convey by making an evidently false statement like Sue was lying asleep on the sofa, reading ‘Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte’ ? Why should a speaker inform
10 This is proved by the negation test: the negation of (3.48) is ‘I am not sorry that I cannot come to your party!’ which likewise indicates that the speaker will not come to the party.
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me of the fact that the bird has escaped its cage? Which inferences does the speaker want me to draw? The ways in which such meta-considerations can inXuence information exchange were Wrst investigated in the work of Grice (Grice 1975; see also Levinson 2000). The basic idea is that the speaker can evaluate the appropriateness of a given utterance under the present circumstances and computes repair interpretations in case the literal utterance would be inappropriate. DiVerent kinds of inappropriateness were spotted: speakers do not state something which is plainly false or unknowable (maxim of quality). Speakers do not state something which is irrelevant (maxim of relevance). Speakers should not be over-informative or too vague (maxim of quantity). Finally, speakers accept certain standards that limit the ways in which some information can be appropriately worded without being too obscure, ambiguous, confused, or wordy (maxim of manner). If a speaker violates these maxims, the hearer will conclude that the intended message must have been something beyond the literally said. Importantly, such pragmatic inferences—implicatures—are in a substantial way part of what the speaker wants to convey.11 Sometimes, the implicatures are almost inseparably tied to a given sentence: may I pass you the salt? will rarely ever be uttered as a true question about whether it would be allowed (but not required) to pass the salt. Do you have a watch? will in the vast majority of cases not felicitously be answered by ‘yes’ or ‘no’ even though it is formally a yes/no question. Greetings and speech acts like you are welcome are based on phrases where the literal meaning conveys little about the function of that phrase in communication.12 In spite of the tight link between sentence and implicature, however, even in such cases there is no visible tendency to derive the implicature from the words of the sentence in a literal fashion. We have described one way to model semantic composition in the previous section, and it is evident that the implicature tell me the time (please) does not arise in any such way from the words do, you, have, a, and watch by semantic composition. The hearer will always, in principle, go from literal meaning (‘wants to know whether I have a
11 General inferences, in contrast, are left to the imagination of the hearer. Not everybody will draw the same conclusions from a given utterance; the result will always depend on the background knowledge and also the intellectual capacities and physical state of the individual hearer. Such variation does not count as a problem in communication. Failure to draw the right pragmatic inferences, in contrast, can severely disturb communication or is conceived as extremely uncooperative. 12 I was deeply puzzled by the recurrent assertions that I ‘was welcome’ when I visited my American relatives for the Wrst time. (German bitte, bitte ¼ ‘please, please’ is equally strange.)
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watch’) via pragmatic evaluation (‘why should that be relevant?’) to implicature (‘wants to know the time’), even if the case may be conventionalized to a high degree. Concluding this section about information beyond the literal meaning of sentences, we can state the following: there is a large spectrum of ways in which hearers can ‘read between the lines’, gather information that diVers from and exceeds the literal content of a given utterance. Some of this information arises by logical reasoning, some by relying on more or less rigid laws about the world, and some by considerations about how sensible and good communication should proceed. Tracing our own communicative experience for this kind of reading between the lines, we will Wnd that it occurs all the time, and also frequently in a conventionalized manner. It is all the more challenging to remind ourselves that only a very small percentage of cases give rise to reanalysis and semantic change. Hence, pragmatic inferencing must be one necessary, but certainly not the suYcient, conversational precondition to instigate reanalysis. It seems that we should take a closer look at examples of meaning change.
4 What is Going to Happen 4.1 Introduction This chapter is devoted to the emergence of the going to future in English, a classical topic of grammaticalization research and Hopper and Traugott’s model case in the introduction to ‘Grammaticalization’. I want to argue that we can better understand this development in the history of English on the basis of a detailed semantic analysis of the stages of the development in question. The analysis in terms of historical pragmatics by Hopper and Traugott (1993) will be my starting point; the brief discussion in Levinson (2000: 262 f.) independently oVers a similar account. According to this view, the futurate reading of the going to do construction comes about when going to sentences in the movement sense are systematically used and understood so as to imply information about future action, as illustrated in the made-up example in (4.1) (taken from Hopper and Traugott 1993: 82): (4.1) I am going to be married a. I am moving on with the purpose of getting married. b. I will be married soon. While there is little doubt about the basic shift as such, we still have imperfect knowledge about the actual contexts where it took place. Evidently, the development is of a quite common type, which has led to the proposal that the emergence of a future tense marker from a verb of movement rests on cognitive universals. Several independent facts support this universal trend. The pragmatic inference from ‘moving on in order to do x’ to ‘doing x soon’ is a universally plausible default inference that depends on no speciWc cultural background. Others proposed metaphoric transfer from ‘moving on in space’ to ‘moving on in time’ (e.g. Sweetser 1988) as the universal source for the construction. It is all the more puzzling that some languages like English or French possess a go-future (for a detailed discussion see Fleischmann 1982;
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Heine and Kuteva 2002 list about sixteen languages with futurate go) and other closely related ones, like German, do not. Can we say anything about the constellations in which the construction actually entered into the grammaticalization process? In the next section, I will report on corpus research that will lead to a hypothesis in answer to this question. It would be highly desirable to get insights into the nature of utterance contexts where reanalysis took place. When are speakers inclined to change their language system? Ideally, our understanding should reach a point where we can mimic such situations in an experimental set-up, evoking micro language changes in individual subjects by presenting them with appropriate utterance situations in suYcient frequency. We are still a long way from that point. In addition to the pragmatic basis of reanalysis, however, we also need to understand the compositional aspects of reanalysis. How exactly does the content of a pragmatic inference get redistributed on the parts of a given sentence? This will be the topic of sections 4.3 and 4.4. Section 4.3 will introduce a theory of tense and aspect. We can then trace how a generalized invited pragmatic inference (Traugott and Dasher 2002) is recomputed as the literal meaning of the respective sentence. In particular, a detailed analysis will clarify how the loss of the progressive aspect, gain of futurity, loss of movement event, a semantically non-void use of the present tense, and a contextually speciWed notion of imminence of an action all result from one single reanalysis. The preciseness of this mode of language change is further illustrated when we turn to some subtle diVerences in the use of the going to future as opposed to the will future at the end of section 4.4. I argue that such subtle diVerences can be explained once we grant speakers the mastery of speciWc, precise denotations of going to at all times. Again, we will see that language change should not be viewed primarily as a result of pattern imitation. The patterns in question are too complicated to be conserved over centuries by mere imitation of utterances.
4.2 The Data Mosse´ (1938: § 282 V.) is one of the earliest sources where the emergence of the going to future is discussed in detail. Mosse´ approaches the development in the theory of semantic Welds and diagnoses for the crucial time between 1550 and 1600 that the English language was in need of a way to state that something would happen in the immediate future. He lists several competing ways to express this thought and Wnally states that all these were mere stylistic variants of the phrase which really was the formula which the English language was seeking (‘. . . le jour ou` l’anglais a trouve´ avec I am going to la
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ve´ritable formule qu’il cherchait’, p. 164). The following examples are commonly oVered as the earliest cases where going to is used in a sense bordering on a futurate reading: (4.2)
Philip . . . Was going to þe ouer Greece Philip was going to thrive over Greece (King Alisaunder, l. 901, early 14th century (þe < OE þeon ¼ ‘thrive’) )
(4.3) Thys onhappy sowle . . . was goyng to be broughte into helle for the synne this unhappy soul was going to be brought to hell for the sin and onleful lustys of her body. and immoral lusts of her body (Monk of Evesham, 1482: 174) (4.4)
. . . We are goyng to oVre at y e holy sepulcre (Huon of Burdeux, 1534: 191)
While the Wrst quote is regarded with scepticism by those who mention it (Mosse´ 1938, Pe´rez 1990, Danchev and Kyto¨ 1994), the second example is commonly viewed as an early isolated instance of going to in a sense bordering on a future tense use. Yet it must be stressed that, in the given context, the wanderings of the named soul are under discussion. The quote could therefore all the same be a traditional use of ‘going to’ in the movement sense, on the basis of a metaphor (‘a soul’s wandering on earth’) which is no longer vivid today. The third example is a passage of direct speech of two travellers who describe the aim of their journey, and going to here translates the French movement verb venir (‘to come’). Hence I assume that the translator of the passage at least intended to make a statement about movement, even though we will see that the crucial contexts of change that I want to propose below have something in common with this passage.1 Mosse´ notes that towards the end of the sixteenth century, such ambiguous uses of going to get more frequent, a Wnding which was conWrmed in corpus search. He oVers clearly futurate uses like (4.5) he is fumbling with his purse-strings, as a Schoole-boy with his points, when hee is going to be whipt. (Earle, 1628: 71)
1 Pe´rez (1990) erroneously claims that French has a venir de faire future, and those acquainted with her paper might be tempted to see an instance of some kind of borrowing here. However, in answer to my enquiries, several native speakers of French as well as scholars acquainted with Old and Middle French agreed that there was no such thing as a French venir faire future (the construction is in fact used to describe the immediate past).
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It is noticeable that of the twelve examples quoted by Mosse´ in this period, eleven are in direct speech, of which nine are used to inform some Wctive hearer about the intentions of the speaker (I am going to . . . ) or some other person in the present (they are going to . . . ) or the past (were going to). Mosse´ states that around 1650, the construction can be seen as a Wrmly established part of English. Examples which leave no question that they are about the future can be found with reasonable frequency. (4.6) when you are going to lay a tax upon the people . . . (Burton, 1657: entry 12 Jan. 16572) This Wnding is conWrmed by a nice passage in a grammar of English of 1646, quoted in Danchev and Kyto¨ (1994), where going to is actually acknowledged as a way to express imminent future (even though the grammar does not mention the construction in the chapter on tense, where only will and shall are listed). (4.7) About to, going to, is the signe of the Participle of the future . . . : as my father when he was about [to] die, gave me this counsell. I am [about; or going to] read. (Poole, 1646: 26) Still, neither Mosse´ nor Traugott and Dasher (2002), Hopper and Traugott (1993), nor Pe´rez (1990) enter into a systematic search for the contexts of origin of the construction. The quest for the contexts of origin was taken up in Danchev and Kyto¨ (1994). They add some more early examples from the Helsinki Corpus, e.g. (4.8) And there vppon the seid persones of the ship of Hull goyng to do the said wrong . . . (Helsinki Corpus, Chancery English, 1438: 174) (4.9)
I pledge you, sir, quoth she, and going to Wl more. (Helsinki Corpus, Madox 1582: 88–9; the passage reports a woman Wlling her mug with beer)
Uses in greater numbers appear only from 1592 on, and signiWcantly all result from their search in the Drama Corpus and are in direct speech—a fact which will presently turn out to be relevant.
Note that Mosse´’s book contains a fatal typo here: the example is dated at 1567—and consequently taken up in Danchev and Kyto¨ as one very early case of an unambiguous futurate use. The original source, Burton, clearly dates from 1657. 2
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Danchev and Kyto¨ make an interesting attempt to oVer reasons why a going to future should arise particularly in English, and particularly at the given time. They report on unpublished work in which they follow the hypothesis that going to future might be a loan construction inspired by the French aller faire which was apparently already in use at the time. This is an interesting hypothesis because (a) it names a speciWc reason for the development in addition to the general possibility for movement verbs to turn into future markers and (b) it would be clearly testable in the data (one would expect the construction to occur Wrst in translations of French texts or in texts written by bilingual speakers). Danchev and Kyto¨’s results are discouraging, though. In particular, they report that the data do not support the hypothesis. If their preliminary impression reported in (1994) was right—and there was no published material to the contrary—then language contact did not play a role in the emergence of the English go based future. This might be a good point to turn to languages without go based future. German does not have such a tense form even though it is in possession of all necessary lexical ingredients and in close contact with languages with go based future. SpeciWcally, German gehen (¼ ‘go’, the unmarked verb of movement) can be combined both with bare inWnitives and (somewhat archaically) with zu-inWnitives to express intentional movement: (4.10)
Emil geht ein Bier holen Emil goes a beer to-fetch ¼ Emil goes/is going (in order to) to fetch a beer
(4.11) Ich gehe, den Meister zu fragen I go, the master to-ask ¼ I go/am going (in order to) ask the master. Yet any futurate use of gehen is clearly bad. (4.12) *Emil Emil *Hans Hans *Das The
geht die Arbeit um fu¨nf Uhr niederlegen goes the work at 5 o’clock stop geht den Aufsatz in drei Wochen zu schreiben goes the paper in three weeks to write Wetter geht schlecht (zu) sein. weather goes bad (to) be
The sentences in (4.12) cannot even vaguely be understood as a poetic, non-literal, metaphoric way to express a future. They are simply downright bad sentences. The observation illustrates once again that a metaphor based theory of grammaticalization will need to distinguish unvolitional
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(or emerging) metaphor from productive metaphor (Heine, Claudi, and Hu¨nnemeyer 1991). Danchev and Kyto¨’s language contact hypothesis becomes even less plausible if we consider some western dialects of German: the Luxembourg dialect does not possess any equivalent of the going to future3 although practically all speakers of these varieties of German are bilingual speakers of German and French. If language contact had been the driving factor in the development of the English going to future, one would expect that aller faire quelque chose likewise serves as a pattern for German dialects in a situation of close language contact. Let me now turn to my own search which rests on three corpora: the Drama Corpus (Stanford University) between 1550 and 1650, the Chadwyck Healey database of Early English Prose Fiction (1518–1650), and the Corpus of Early English Correspondences (CEECS). While I am well aware that this oVers just another fragment of language use of the time, the number and nature of samples is still reasonably broad and, hopefully, telling. I will Wrst sum up the Wndings in the CEECS corpus. It contains a total of 1,137 letters, written by a variety of persons of both sexes, diVerent ranks, profession, and education, between 1410 and 1680. We Wnd altogether nineteen instances of going to (in eighteen diVerent letters), all between 1585 and 1660. Of the nineteen goi/yng to, we only Wnd Wve which could be understood or give rise to an implication about actions in the imminent future. I list these examples: (4.13)
I am now going to prepare for her Ma¼ties¼ coming to Woborne (Francis Russell, 1572)
(4.14) I was somewayes a very unfortunat man . . . that founde scant of her majesties wonted favour towardes me before my going to take so great and weightye a charge as this in hande . . . (The Earl of Leicester, 1586) (4.15)
This even, our general’s troop of gentlemen, going to quarter themselves about the country, were betrayed and beset by the enemy . . . (Nehemia Wharton, 1642, letter to George Willingham)
(4.16) I sow him as I was retorning from bringing my Lady Blaxton in hear going to see Ser Willam her husband, wich is a presnor at (^Moretoke^) casel neare Coventry. (Frances Basire to Isaac Basire Senior, 1651) 3 This information is based on judgements of a native linguist, Emil Weydert, for Luxembourgish. I want to thank him for his patience.
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I heard they were going to sit in councill, and the French ambassador had publick audience that day . . . (Isaak Basire Junior to Isaac Basire Senior, 1665)
The latter three examples are all at a time when the construction was already established, which leaves us with the Wrst two examples. The other fourteen uses of goi/yng to were clearly locative, accompanied by a locative PP argument in all cases. The corpus contains seven instances of went to (do), of which six are common collocations in the ‘move in order to do x’ sense, like went to deliver a letter, went to see someone, went to meet someone, went to lead me somewhere, I went to bring them oV. A comparison with the prose Wction of the same period proves that such phrases were also extremely common in literary prose, and commonly used in situations where an actual movement was communicated (e.g. the protagonist has to actually move in order to deliver the letter, etc.). There is one dubious use of went to where it, however, seems to convey the progress of an activity (‘to write’) rather than having a futurate sense: (4.18) Madam, I ask your pardon for not giving you all this time an account of our cosin’s husband; truly I had it 2 or 3 times in my hede when I went to write, and still like a best forgot it . . . (Eliza Lady Cornwallis to Jane Lady Bacon, 1641) It is unclear whether Lady Cornwallis means to say ‘I was thinking two or three times about it when I prepared my writing this letter’ or ‘I had it two or three times in mind in writing (about other things)’. We will see later that the verb went carried its own possibilities for futurate uses, going back to the verb’s older sense ‘to turn round’. Finally, the wife of the Basire family (a family who provides two of the Wve imminence-uses of going to) can also write: (4.19) The cheldren . . . ax me when you will com hom, and when thy mos go to see you (Frances Basire to Isaak Basire Senior, 1654) The Wndings conWrm the earlier judgement of Mosse´ that the construction became popular between 1550 and 1650, but they moreover indicate that going to future did not, in all likelihood, originate in spoken language. A total of six vaguely futurate go constructions suggests that the locution was not part of the everyday spoken language of the authors. Hence, we are justiWed in consulting other corpora, speciWcally literary texts, in the quest for the origin of the going to future. I will turn to drama and prose Wction texts.
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The overall statistics show once more that even in literary texts, going to constructions were not extremely common. The English Drama Corpus (Stanford) covers a total of about 138 pieces dated between 1550 and 1662. Only 78 of them contain any instances of going to (in any spelling), and 37 going to + Verb. All in all we Wnd a total of 116 going to constructions, of which 38 are with a verb. I will also consider eight additional uses of going to + verb in Shakespeare’s dramas which are listed in Burtlett’s concordance (1894). Chadwyck Healey’s EEPF database contains 145 texts between 1518 and 1650. Seventy-nine of these contain a going to construction, of which 31 also contain going to + verb. Here we have a total of 270 going-to, of which 78 are with a verb.4 Yet not all uses of going to with a verb show an imminent future reading. The crucial question will be, what do those contexts where going to + verb tends towards an ‘imminent future’ sense have in common? The going to construction occurs in two diVerent types of construction in the texts: on the one hand, we Wnd it under an auxiliary be, the typical tensed clause in the progressive, as in (4.20): (4.20) Horatio: Sir, I am going to visit a friend, that’s sicke (Drama Corpus: B. Jonson, Poetaster, 1601: ii. i) On the other hand, literary authors at the time made lavish use of the converb construction [N [ V-ing . . . ]] to provide background information about the referent of N, as in hauing Wrst knit their mindes vnto him, . . . they willingly helde out the course . . . , they hauing heard of this sodaine going out, . . . the blinde King . . . with many teares . . . setting forth to the whole people, the new King (hauing no lesse louingly performed all dueties . . . (all from Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 1593: 146). In prose texts, the majority of uses of going to cohere to that pattern, as in (4.21):
Table 2 Up to 1630
be going to
N, going to . . . , others
Prose Wction Drama, incl. Shakespeare
12 19
23 5 (+ 2 in stage directions)
4 Some authors have a real liking for the phrase, in particular Sir Philip Sidney, Robert Kittowe, Lady Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, and later Roger Boyle.
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Table 3 Up to 1630
be going to / futurate use
N, going to / futurate use
Prose Wction Drama, incl. Shakespeare
8 16
10 2
(4.21) For Zelmane seeming to strike his head, and he going to warde it, withall stept backe as he was . . . (EEPF: Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 1593: 154 (fo. 75, sig. N3) ) Each type of construction shows its own pragmatic characteristics, and I will discuss them in turn. Let me start with an overview of the number of uses of either type of construction in drama and prose, and the proportion of ‘futurate uses’ to ‘movement uses’ of either type of construction in both types of texts (Table 2). I decided here to concentrate on the data from the beginning to 1630. In this period we have a reasonable total number of uses; later the futurate uses show up regularly enough to suggest that the initial phase of grammaticalization is over (remember that the construction was oYcially acknowledged in the grammar book of 1646). This shows that the participial construction was more common for literary Wction, while the be going to is more frequent in oral communication—even if only the literary spoken language of drama. However, it would be too simple to assume that the futurate sense of going to arose particularly in spoken passages of be going to. Table 3 shows that futurate uses occur for both types of construction:5 This shows that the be going to construction slightly more frequently suggests a futurate reading than the participial use, but still about half of the participial constructions have a futurate sense as well. Neither of the two types of construction antedates the other. We need to take a closer look into these uses. 4.2.1. Be going to constructions in possibly futurate uses The typical beAux going to in a futurate use stands in the present, or relates to the present, as in (4.13) (¼ letter) and (4.20) (drama), as well as the following examples: 5 Somewhat unsatisfyingly, the reader will have to rely on my classiWcation which cannot be identiWed with a set of recurrent criteria which could distinguish futurate and movement uses. For each case, I took into consideration the type of embedded verb, the content of the overall passage, and in particular the reference time at that point of the story and the temporal structure of the narrative. For each example, a full justiWcation could be given; submitting to the given limits of space, I will not spell them out for all sixty-one sentences.
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(4.22) Stout resolved mates! Are you now going to dispatch the deed? (Shakespeare, Richard III: i. iii. 341) (4.23)
. . . are you going to catch Quailes, that you bring your pipes with you? (Drama Corpus: T. Dekker and J. Webster, Vvest vvard hoe, 1604: v. 1)
(4.24) Sir we want a seruice, and are going to get a Master. (Drama Corpus: E. Sharpham, The Fleire, 1606: ii). Both in the letter in (4.13) as well as in the dramas, the utterances share two typical features: Wrst, the use of the phrase oVers a convenient way for the author to convey the intentions of the respective protagonists or—in the letter—his own. Secondly, in utterance situations of that type, the hearer has no evidence as to whether any actual movement of the speaker is involved. The letter’s author, Francis Russell, might start the mentioned preparations by making a ‘to-do’ list right at the desk. In drama, on the other hand, the visible movement of the actors on and oV the stage is perceived by the audience as a necessary part of the construction of a play: all actors are continuously in motion, sometimes because a scene is constructed as a meeting of persons by accident (see (4.20) ), but sometimes only to clear the stage for the next scene. The audience will frequently not know whether a real going corresponds to a movement of the character in the Wction. They will know that the author of the play is aware of this fact, as well. Consequently, they will understand that the author of the play uses a sentence like I am going to get the Bell to towle for her (Drama Corpus: Robert Brome, The City Wit, 1630) primarily to spell out the intentions of some protagonist and not to express that this protagonist might be gone from that Wctional place for some time. Interestingly, all early examples in Danchev and Kyto¨ (1994) after 1592 conform to this pattern, namely their examples (7), (8), (9), (14), (17), as well as four quotes from Shakespeare dramas. (I do not agree with their judgement that Shakespeare only used going to in the movement sense. The fact that Shakespeare’s passages with going to often convey intentions more dominantly than movement is witnessed by many literary translations into German which frequently render going to by tun wollen (¼ ‘wish to do’, ‘will do’) or im BegriV sein zu tun (¼ ‘be about to do’)—we will come back to this issue at the end of this section. Moreover, example (4.26) below oVers a clearly futurate going to in Shakespeare.) DiVerent constellations hold in prose Wction. It is worth noting that of the eight reported be going to uses that can, in principle, be understood in a futurate sense, six are in Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (1623) and that this author is among those who use the going to construction with highest frequency. Most of her uses are in Wxed phrases like going to seek, going to Wnd, going to hunt, which are also attested in other tenses of the verb go (went to seek, went to Wnd, went to hunt, . . . ) at the time. In these
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uses, go is unambiguously used in a movement sense and I hence conclude that even in the progressive, they are read as the progressive form of a common movement construction. (4.25) shows the only isolated combination of going to + verb: (4.25) in rich and costly apparell, as though she had been going to performe her nuptiall ceremonies. (Richard Johnson, The Seuen Champions of Christendome, Part 2, 1597: ch. II) (4.25) leaves it open whether Richard Johnson had been thinking about a movement or a notion of imminence. The example, as far as I can see, oVers no evidence about the emergence of the going to future. 4.2.2. Converb N, going to in possibly futurate uses The participial construction does not share the pragmatic features of progressive be going to and my quotes oVer little evidence as to how semantic reanalysis started. It might, however, help us to understand why the construction caught on so decisively or, to repeat Mosse´’s metaphor, why it was ‘exactly the construction the English language had been looking for’. Curiously, the examples include an early and pretty clear futurate use of going to in Shakespeare: (4.26) the Duke of Cornwall’s dead Slain by his servant, going to put out The other eye of Gloster (Shakespeare, King Lear, 1608: iv. ii. 71) The speaker reports on a battle, and the Duke of Cornwall was engaged in a Wght with Gloucester. Hence, it is clear that he would not have had to go far to reach Gloucester and put out his eye. This use cannot, therefore, have any movement component. This kind of use is also evidenced by example (4.21) as well as three further examples, two of which are again battle scenes. It is interesting to note that this use shows evident analogies to rare went to examples like the following which describes the battle between a crocodile and a serpent.6 (4.27) Ah (quod the Crocodile) thou canst not deceyue mee, for thou art no Snake but a Lampurn, and altogither like to one, and therefore I will kill thee, but as she went to slaye him, the serpent prepared him selfe, byte hir, . . . (EEPF: Thomas Blage, A schole of Wise Conceytes, 1569: 205, ‘Of the Lampurne and the Crocodile’) 6 German uses the particle verb darangehen, X zu tun ¼ ‘there-to-go to do X’ in order to describe the preparatory and initial phase of an action.
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Such uses of went to look like remnants of the older sense of went, ‘to turn round, to turn towards’. The OED lists went as past tense + past participle of wend, deriving from a Common Germanic root, in OE present as wendan ( > ModHG wenden). Reading no. 8: ‘Of persons: to turn in thought or purpose to . . . a course of action’ Wts these examples. While these few cases of [N, going to] can hardly receive a sensible movement interpretation, all other cases are of the common ambiguous kind where it is simply unclear whether the person is described as ‘being in motion towards some action’ or ‘being in preparation for some action’. Actually, quite a number of uses turn out to describe an ongoing movement if we look at the wider context: (4.28)
. . . an olde man going to take a place was mockingly rejected . . . (EEPF: John Lyly, Euphves, 1580: 121)
The story is that the old man was actually wandering around in a crowded stadium in order to Wnd a seat: In this case, going to is not used to describe the moment in which the man is actually sitting down. I propose that these Wndings can be tied together in the following way. On the one hand, be going to had become a phrasal way to express one’s plans for the near or immediate future. Such passages were used with the express intention to convey information about the plans of the protagonists. The communicative ‘weight’ of such intentions can best be estimated when we trace it in present-day language. Focusing for a moment on present-day German, the geh- tun construction is used with the side message that the person in question was/is/will be away for some time. This side message, of course, crucially rests on the movement verb and, consequently, German shows no inclination whatsoever to develop a ‘go’ based future tense. Early Modern English must have been diVerent at this point. Here the side message was clearly that the person in question was about to do X, when going to do X. At this point, we can assume that semantic reanalysis, to be analysed in section 4.4, took place. The resulting construction turned out to be particularly handy at that time, because it allowed authors to describe a person P as ‘P, being in preparation of, or about to do, X ’ in terms of the participial construction [N, [ V-ing to do X ]] with the verb go. Importantly, there was no good alternative at hand: In Mosse´’s survey of competing forms to express imminent action, we Wnd be about to, be vpon as well as the verbs purpose to, mean to, mind to. None of them oVered a viable alternative construction: EEPF lists only six uses of being about to between 1518 and 1630 in total, and none of be vpon to in a non-local sense.
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The three verbs purpose to, mean to, and mind to can be found in participial constructions in great numbers (33, 81, and 44 uses between 1518 and 1630, respectively). Still, they describe conscious planning or underlying motives rather than imminence of an action, and are hence not a good replacement for N, going to do x. It is plausible to assume that the literary author would thankfully make use of futurate going to, in order to maintain the common participial construction to give background information about some person. I will end this section with a brief discussion of the diVerent conventions of use for German tun gehen and English going to do. As mentioned before, the implicational and metaphoric potential of the German construction are exactly the same (at any time) as for English in 1550. The crucial diVerence between the two languages seems to be that, in German, a sentence such as (4.29) is never ever used as a conventional means to express one’s intentions for the near future. (4.29) Ich gehe mal ein Bier holen I go just a beer fetch ‘I go/am going to fetch a beer.’ The construction is conventionally used to inform the hearer that the speaker will be away for some time, or—in the third person—to motivate a person’s absence: Peter ist das Auto waschen gegangen (¼ ‘Peter has gone/has left to wash the car’). Even though hearers will be able to draw sometimes exciting inferences about the near future (‘there will be beer soon’) they will have no inclination to reanalyse a sentence like (4.29) as a imminent-future-tense because the point of the speaker is, to tell that they will be gone for some time. The German case highlights the fact that Generalized Invited Inferences in the sense of Traugott and Dasher (2002) must really be seen as part of an exegetive process: What does the speaker want to tell me? Diachronically, we Wnd that the combination gehen with an inWnitival complement arises much later than in English. Hans Sachs in his 1557 Eulenspiegel mit dem blauen Hosentuche exclusively uses gehen always in a clear directional sense (hingehen ‘go towards’, hineingehen ‘enter’, vorausgehen ‘go before’, etc., Fastnachtsspiel Eulenspiegel mit dem blauen Hosentuche, 1557). About a hundred years later, Andreas Gryphius likewise never uses gehen with an inWnitival complement (searched: ‘Herr Peter Squenz’, 1657/8). The picture becomes more diVerentiated once we look at plays which were actually translations of English drama. We possess a considerable number of
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plays from the early seventeenth century, known as ‘Stu¨cke der Englischen Komo¨dianten’ (¼ pieces of the English comedians) which were translated from English by unknown writers in order to be acted before a German audience. Let me give two examples: in Comoedia von der Ko¨nigin Esther and Comoedia von dem verlornen Sohn (both in Tittmann 1880) a conjunctive construction gehen und P tun (‘go and do P’) is used frequently. Particularly in the second play, the Wgure Diener (‘servant’) uses it as a formula to announce his intention to obey the commands of his master: (p. 52) jetzt gehe ich hin und bestelle solch eine Herberge (‘now go I there and seek such a hostel’), (p. 57) ich gehe hin und sage es ihm an (‘I go there and tell him’), (p. 66, son) hie wil ich fu¨r diese Thu¨r gehen und bitten (‘here will I before this door go and ask’), (p. 73) ich gehe hin und wil es ihme sagen (‘I go there and will it him tell’). Unfortunately, I was not able to get an edition of the English original; it would be of interest to see whether we really see translations of going to do constructions here. Whatever its origin, the wording of such sentences (do A and do B) clearly does not possess the necessary grammatical ambiguity to invite reanalysis as a future tense. About a hundred years later, the Wrst literary translations of Shakespeare were oVered by Christian Wieland (1762–6). Wieland’s German possesses the gehen zu tun construction; yet he, as well as later translators in the early nineteenth century (Tieck and Schlegel, Bodenstedt et al.), carefully avoid this construction as soon as they want to make it clear that the respective passages in Shakespeare’s original are about intentions rather than movements. Instead we Wnd translations as in (4.30): (4.30) The duke will be at court tomorrow, and they are going to meet him (Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. iii) Der Herzog selbst kommt morgen an den Hof, und sie the duke himself comes tomorrow to the court and they wollen ihm entgegenreiten. want him towards-ride (‘want to do’ construction; Tieck and Schlegel) Letters to my friends, and I am going to deliver them (Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii. i) Ein Bote wartet, um meinen Freunden Briefe mitzunehmen, a messenger waits to my friends letters take-with und jetzo wollt ich sie ihm u¨berbringen and now wanted I them to-him give (‘want to do’ construction; Tieck and Schlegel)
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I am now going to resolve him (Measure for Measure, iii. i) Ich bin im BegriV, ihm meinen Entschluß melden; . . . (iii. 3) I am ‘about’ him my decision resolve (‘be about to do’; Wieland) Going to Wnd a barefoote brother out, One of our order to associate me . . . And Wnding him, the Searchers of the Towne . . . Scald up the doores, and would not let us forth, so that my speed to Mantua there was staid. (Romeo and Juliet, V ii.5) Ich wollte zum Geleit mir einen Bruder Barfu¨ßer holen, I wanted for company me a brother barefoot get einen unsres Ordens . . . one of-our order (‘want to do’; Bodenstedt) Slaine by his servant, going to put out The other eye of Gloster (King Lear, iv. ii. 71) Ihn schlug sein Knecht, als er ausreißen wollte Graf Glosters him slayed his knight when he rip-out wanted Duke Gloster’s zweites Auge second eye (‘want to do’; Tieck and Schlegel) The translators chose gehen when the notion of movement or absence is salient; the nicest example is the following passage in Measure for Measure where fare you well stresses this aspect: (4.31) a. Escalus: . . . I am going to visit the prisoner. Fare you well. (Measure for Measure, iii. ii. 272) b. Ich gehe den Gefangenen zu besuchen; lebet wohl. I go the prisoner to visit fare well (Wieland, iii. 7) I conclude that this diachronic evidence is in concord with the current use of gehen zu tun in German. Even though a sentence as in (4.31b) will allow, and even suggest, the inference that Escalus will soon visit the prisoner (the pragmatics of the utterance should not be changed in a good translation after all), the phrase gehen zu tun never became a phrasal formula to express an intention in German.
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These digressions into a language without a going to future lent further support to the hypothesis that grammaticalization and reanalysis are not a language inherent tendency. Reanalysis rests crucially on speciWc communicative situations, the right kind of side message, the right kind of grammatical material. An investigation of such utterance contexts—in historical sources but even more in current language use—will hopefully lead to a better understanding of the nature of Generalized Invited Inferencing which Traugott and Dasher (2002: 35–9) identify as the Wrst step of grammaticalization. I will now turn to an account of the actual reanalysis in terms of formal semantics. The next section oVers some background in the semantic representation of tense and aspect before we turn to an analysis of the reanalysis of going to in section 4.4.
4.3 Some Background in the Semantics of Tense and Aspect The investigation of tense and aspectual markers is among the core topics of semantic research. Kai von Fintel (1995: 177 f.) notes that ‘the semantics of . . . modals, tenses, aspects etc. is after all the bread and butter of working semanticists’ and a large body of literature reXects this semantic activity. For our present purpose, however, it will suYce to review a limited range of phenomena: English tenses and the progressive, with sporadic illustrative allusions to the present and past perfect. Any investigation in tense and progressive will take the idea that tense is an inherently deictic category as a starting point. In one sense, this is an almost trivial insight: tenses only make sense with respect to a now, the time of speech S. An early approach to model tenses exclusively on the basis of this insight is closely linked to the work of Arthur Prior (e.g. Prior 1967, 1968). At about the same time, Hans Reichenbach made an alternative proposal (Reichenbach 1966) that turned out to be more faithful to the phenomenon: Tense and Aspect serve to relate at least three time parameters: speech time S, event time E, and reference time R. Reichenbach’s original work attempted to cover a wide range of examples of sentences in English, exhibiting a wide variety of tenses and aspects. While the details of his system turned out not to be tenable, his main insight remains convincing till today: the diVerence between sentence (4.32a) and (4.32b) lies in the fact that (a) focuses on some time in the past R and states what was the case then, whereas (b) seems to focus on some time in the past R and states what happened before that time. (4.32) a. Emily visited her aunt in June. b. Emily had visited her aunt in June.
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I will use little graphics as in (4.33) to depict such constellations whenever necessary. (4.33) a. ————[xxxxxx]R¼June ————S————! visit to aunt time of speech b. ———xxxxxJune ———R—————S————! visit to aunt ref.time time of speech The basic intuition in Reichenbach’s account is plausible enough, and two of the three time parameters are necessary beyond doubt: S, the time of speech (also called utterance time or simply the now) and E, the time of the event reported, in our case: the event of Emily’s visit to her aunt. The third parameter, R, is of a more elusive nature. While S and E are determined by the facts in the world, R seems to be deWned by the mental state of the narrator of the story. In other words: any event in the past can be narrated in the past perfect (‘before R’) and in the simple past (‘at R’) with similar justiWcation, depending on the inner mental focus of the speaker. Does truth value based semantics need to represent such subjective states? For many authors, the answer was a clear no. Which—as the reader might have suspected—was wrong. Still, it took almost Wfty years of research in logical semantics to see the appropriate place for Reichenbach’s system. The development of formal discourse semantics was the most important step on this way. In the early 1980s Hans Kamp (Kamp 1981) and Irene Heim (Heim 1982, both reprinted in Portner and Partee 2003) proposed formal treatments of a discourse, a sequence of more than just one sentence. Since then, several more technically advanced versions of the framework have been developed, ensuring methodological cleanness and allowing the integration of more sophisticated treatments of other semantic phenomena (Chierchia, 1995, Groenendijk and Stokhof 1991, Dekker 1993, Ja¨ger 1996, to name but a few). Yet the modelling of tense and aspect in terms of discourse semantics has been laid out in most detail in Kamp’s original framework (Kamp and Reyle 1993; see also Hinrichs 1986). Even though Kamp’s discourse representation theory is the most perspicuous of the competing theories (and therefore also the most popular one for many people), we can luckily avoid a full shift to his framework. In 1994, Wolfgang Klein presented Time in Language (Klein 1994), a modern working variant of Reichenbach’s original proposal, where many phenomena about tenses, progressive aspect, and the perfect (both in English and German) are discussed with a minimum of formal apparatus. If one takes Klein’s account as a simpliWed proposal for a module in Kamp and Reyle’s framework,
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one will get a semantically well-justiWed, working treatment of tense and aspect.7 What does discourse representation theory have to oVer in order to understand the nature of the reference time R? The essential feature of all discourse semantic formalisms is that they allow us to keep a record of the things that were introduced in a narration. Consider the ridiculously simple discourse in (4.34): (4.34) A man was in the park. He whistled. Logical semantics, as laid out in Chapter 3, allows us to model the existential statement made in the Wrst sentence (true iV there exists some man in the unique park described) and allows us, perhaps, to model the open statement made by the second sentence (x whistled, whoever x may be). Discourse representation theories, in contrast, make use of so-called discourse referents in order to keep track of the individuals in a discourse. The representation of the Wrst sentence will not only reXect the truth value behaviour of this sentence but will introduce something like an address for the person introduced. This address can be accessed in further sentences—like sentence two in (4.34)—and more information can be added about its holder. This will enable us to link the Wrst and second sentence in (4.34) in roughly the following way: (4.34) A man was in the park. [ a1 j Man(a1) ^ In-Park(a1)] ‘there exists something—let us call it a1 for the moment—which is a man and which is in the park’ He whistled. ‘The something mentioned earlier—we called it a1—whistled.’ [a1 j Man(a1) ^ In-Park(a1) ^ Whistle(a1) ] While the paraphrases of such examples commonly sound unspectacular, the implementation of this simple idea turned out to be a major breakthrough in semantic theory. The interpretation of tenses and aspects was one among the many semantic phenomena which turned out to be anaphoric in character. Cross-references in texts are frequently ambiguous, and languages provide strategies for anaphora resolution. In the domain of individuals and things, we have strategies to guide the resolution of anaphors, for instance by making 7 I by no means want to give the impression that Kamp and Reyle’s job consisted merely in writing some fancy formulae around Klein’s proposal. It is the major step in the development of any formal semantic treatment of phenomena in natural language to work out some initially plausible idea in terms of a more general framework and see whether it works out. Usually, it does not, and usually, the attempts to remedy the original idea will lead to subtle insights about the phenomenon under scrutiny.
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use of a gender system, distinguish discourse referents according to salience (e.g. it, this, that), and so on. In the domain of events, actions, activities, and states, similar anaphoric cross-references take place. Tense/aspect systems like in English serve to ensure that the hearer can compute temporal crossreferences and relations in an orderly fashion. This function could only be fully appreciated once discourse representation theories were available. I will now introduce some core ideas step by step. First, we assume that verbs, as well as noun phrases, introduce discourse referents. Remember that verbs have an event argument, as discussed in Chapter 3. Cross-references such as in (4.35) witness that these event arguments can be addressed as discourse referents as easily as referents for persons and things. (4.35) Sally cut the cake. She did it carefully, with a knife, at midnight, in the kitchen, . . . It pleased her. It is widely accepted that modiWers of manner, instruments, time and space information, perhaps certain kinds of causal information, and perhaps other constructions predicate over events (Asher 1993, Eckardt 2001 for an overview). We can therefore coherently assume that the it in (4.35) takes up the event e introduced in the Wrst sentence (the cutting of the cake by Sally) and oVers further information about e. This proves that events (and eventualities in a wider sense) are available ‘addresses’ in the processing of further sentences. The second important idea is that a common narrative of several sentences not only reports the existence of several unrelated eventualities but that we understand these eventualities to be temporally, causally, or mereologically related. Take the three sentences in (4.36). Under normal circumstances, the reader will assume that they report temporally adjacent events. (4.36) Sally entered the Xat. Pete was singing ‘O sole mio’. She prepared coVee. It seems reasonable to understand that the order of narration corresponds to the ordering of events. We will naturally assume that Sally Wrst entered the Xat and then prepared coVee, not the other way round. The contrasting (4.37) shows that this is not exclusively due to world knowledge. (4.37) Sally prepared coVee. She entered the Xat. Pete was singing ‘O sole mio’. Here we understand that Sally prepared coVee somewhere outside the Xat, even though it might be initially more plausible to assume that coVee
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machines and taps are rather inside a Xat than outside. The eVect seems to be a compulsory interpretative strategy, not just a matter of plausibility. What about Pete’s singing? It doesn’t seem to relate to the other events in the ‘and then, and then, and then’ manner (sequence of events). Instead, we understand it to take place in the background. In (4.36), we understand that the singing had already started before Sally entered the Xat and was, in all likelihood, going on at least for some time during her preparing coVee. In (4.37), it is open whether Pete sang already during the preparation of coVee, but again, he certainly started singing before Sally entered the Xat. Many tests and sample sentences have conWrmed the Wrst intuition that this is caused by the progressive aspect of the sentence. We can look at a little test case here: (4.38) Sally entered the Xat. Pete sang ‘O sole mio’. In (37), it is more plausible to understand that Pete sang ‘O sole mio’ after Sally had entered the Xat, perhaps as a welcome or otherwise in response to her arrival. Example (4.39) demonstrates yet another way in which two events may relate to one another, this time driven by the past perfect: (4.39) Sally entered the Xat. Pete had prepared coVee. In this case, we will understand that the second event introduced in the narrative has taken place previous to the Wrst event, in other words: that Sally is welcomed by the scent of freshly brewed coVee. The use of the past perfect in the second sentence will drive us to understand this order of events, rather than any other. Example (4.39) can shed light on the nature of the reference time R. In the given example, it looks as if the reference time was simply the time of the last introduced, most salient, most prominent event. If we equate R with the time of e1, Sally’s entering of the Xat, Reichenbach’s strategy to interpret the past perfect comes down to the following condition: event time of e2 (the preparation of the coVee) before R. The graphic in (a) depicts what we know before we meet sentence two. The graphic in (b) shows our information after we understand sentence two. In between, I have given Reichenbach’s instruction for the interpretation of the past perfect. (4.40) a. ——————R ¼ e1————S———! entering of Xat speech time PAST PERFECT: Event of the sentence e happened before current R. b. ————e2—————R ¼ e1————S————! P prepares coVee S enters Xat speech time
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These examples show how tenses and aspects regulate the temporal ordering of events that are by and by introduced in a discourse. The anaphoric nature of the process becomes even clearer if we think of tenses and aspects we have seen so far in terms of explicit paraphrases of the following kind. The anaphors are printed in italics. (4.41) Simple Past ¼ ‘after that’ Past Progressive ¼ ‘at about the same time as that’ Past Perfect ¼ ‘before that’ The use of a reference time R is in many constellations just a way to spell out the anaphoric contribution of a tense or aspect: whatever event that may link up to in some particular discourse, we will simply address it as the reference time R. I have introduced three core ideas in a semantic theory of tense and aspect so far. First, events are temporally related to one another in narrations in an anaphoric way. Second, tenses and aspects regulate the temporal relations between events in a narrative. And third, the use of Reichenbach’s system of reference time R, speech time S, and event time t(e) is simply an abstract way to characterize these anaphoric processes in a way which does not relate to any speciWc discourse. The last bit that we need before we can come back to the main topic of the chapter is a survey of the semantic contributions made by some of the main tenses and aspects. A detailed motivation for these can be found in Klein (1994) and extracted from Kamp and Reyle (1993). Klein proposes that tenses and aspects make modular contributions in sentence interpretation. A rule of thumb is that tenses deWne the relation between R and S while aspects deWne the relation between R and t(e). (4.41) lists the tense contributions. The tenses Present, Past, and Future are seen as abstract features where morphosyntax has to specify which verb forms realize these features. Hence, the Present of a main verb is realized by using the present tense form of that verb, the Past is realized by the past inXection, and the Future in English is expressed by making use of one of the auxiliaries will or shall.8 (4.42) ½Present is interpreted as R¼S ½Past is interpreted as R<S ½Future is interpreted as S
8
To be precise, the tense takes a proposition p and adds the noted conditions as one further conjunct. I only list the respective conjuncts, and will add them freely in the examples to come, because I do not want to burden the discussion with issues of scope between TENSE and the subject NP.
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Progressive tenses and simple tenses diVer in that they relate the time of the event to R in diVerent ways. In order to clarify (4.43), I have to add two things. First, while S is commonly conceptualized as a true point in time, i.e. as something very short, the reference time R can be a larger time interval. In the simple tense, for instance, R can be long enough to contain the entirety of the duration of the event e.9 (4.43) ½Progressive ¼ R t(e) ½Simple: reset R to shortly after last salient event; t(e) R The more puzzling part is the resetting of R in the simple tense. At this place, it becomes apparent that R is just a shorthand for the anaphoric crossreferences in discourse. Take a simple three-sentence story like the following as an example. (4.44) Sally entered the Xat. She took oV her coat. Tom gasped. (She was wearing a fancy new dress.) The Wrst three sentences are all in the simple past. This means that the reference time in all three cases is before the speech time, and that in all cases, the events related (e1, the entering, e2, the undressing, and e3, the gasp) do not leap around the reference time but are included in R. It is easy to see that this is still too unspeciWc. These qualiWcations would allow a large reference interval in which the three events could occur in any order. Actually, the discourse in (4.44) states that e1, e2, and e3 happen in sequence, one after the other. Modelling tense and aspect via a reference time R requires a dynamic notion of reference time. After the temporal relations between older events and a newly introduced event of the current sentence have been added to the semantic interpretation (i.e. as soon as we know which events come after another, precede each other, or overlap each other), we will have to reset the current reference time, in other words: state that it is now located brieXy after the last event introduced. The Wgure below illustrates the subsequent parsing of the three sentences in (4.44): e2 e3 S e1 ———(—.—)—(—.—)—(—.—)———! R3 R1 ! R2 !
9 Of course, if S ¼ R in the present tense, R has to be as brief as S. This is basically the reason why, in English, only stative verbs and progressive aspects are allowed in the present tense while a sentence like Tom eats apples is odd, or has to be reinterpreted in a stative manner, namely as describing a common habit of Tom.
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You will realize that the resetting only makes sense in a discourse semantic framework: only when all older event times are still available does it make sense that R is now a bit ‘later’ (later than what?). In the remainder of the chapter I will only be concerned with the discussion of tense and aspect of single sentences and hence will ignore the resetting. However, I feel that I owe readers this bit of information because they might otherwise rightly object that the whole formalism was not able to capture the data which served to motivate its introduction. I will conclude this section with a brief discussion of some more tense forms and their representation in the given format. While these are not a necessary prerequisite for section 4.4 they might serve to give some feeling for the range and limitations of the approach. Let us consider how Reichenbach’s observation about the diVerence between simple past and past perfect is captured in the approach. Reichenbach’s own suggestion to interpret the past perfect is given in (4.45): (4.45) ½Past Perfect ¼ t(e) < R This deWnition will nicely capture the behaviour of a single sentence in the past perfect in a discourse in the past. In order to facilitate the discussion, the events described by the respective sentences are immediately named in brackets: (4.46) Sue entered the Xat (e1). Pete was singing (e2). He had prepared coVee (e3). Sue took oV her coat (e4). Our rules to interpret tenses and aspects so far will yield a semantic interpretation of this discourse with the temporal structure depicted in (4.47). The Wrst event e1 is located at the reference time R before the speech time S, i.e. at some time in the past. The second event e2 overlaps R and therefore also e1. The past perfect of sentence three will be interpreted so as to locate e3 before the current reference time R. Sentence four is again in the simple past, which will—correctly—lead us to understand that e4 is again part of the sequence of events e1, e2: the simple past carries us back to the current reference time R, and e4 is located shortly after e1.10 (4.47) ————e3 ————e1 —e4 ————S———— ! . . . . . . .e2 . . . . . . . 10 Intuitively, we want to locate e4 shortly after e1, even though e2, the singing, was reported later. Kamp and Reyle capture this by distinguishing between states and events: sentences in the progressive denote states, and only events are ordered in the time line. This solution eventually is more satisfying but leads to both notational and ontological complications which are unnecessary here.
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As soon as we make use of the reference time in this way, it also becomes clear that R has a well-deWned function in the temporal interpretation of a narrative which can be tested against empirical data. In fact, we seem to master even more reference points in time. Consider the diVerence between the stories in (4.48a) and (4.48b). They show that we can also relate the time of events in the past perfect in a narrative. (4.48) a. Sue entered the Xat. At noon, the milkman had arrived. Pete had been taking a shower. b. Sue entered the Xat. At noon, the milkman had arrived. Pete had taken a shower. The narrative in (a) conveys that Pete had started showering even before the milkman arrived. The story could continue telling that Pete did not pay the milkman because he was all wet. The narrative in (b), in contrast, suggests that Pete’s showering occurred any time before Sue’s arrival. Such observations conWrm the view that tenses and aspects can serve to express and understand the order of events reported in a piece of discourse without having to resort to explicit temporal speciWcations (and then, and after that, but meanwhile, . . . ). This brief introduction into the interpretation of tense and aspects has equipped us with the core ideas and notations to come back to the reanalysis of going to from a motion verb to something like a future tense. These are the main points: . All sentences oVer information about the temporal relation between reference time R, speech time S, and event time t(e). . In English, the tenses deWne the temporal relation between R and S while the aspects, particularly here the progressive/simple aspect, deWne the temporal relation between R and t(e). Tense and aspect are treated in a modular fashion.11 . Tenses and aspects are viewed as abstract features. It is a matter of morphosyntax to determine how a certain tense + aspect combination is expressed for a given verb. The tenses and aspects we have seen in the present section were exclusively based on the relations of temporal precedence and overlap. Do tense and aspect markers solely code such temporal relations between R, S, and t(e)? 11
It is one of the big challenges in the business whether this ideal can be extended to a treatment of the perfect. For a working attempt for English see Kamp and Reyle (1993); German has been discussed extensively in Musan (2001, 2002).
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Presumably not. The system can easily capture constructions which contribute additional information about these parameters. French venir de faire (‘coming of doing’) could be such a case. It states that an event took place in the immediate past. The meaning contribution of the going to future in the next section will oVer yet another example.
4.4 From Movement to Future Marker In section 4.2, I discussed the empirical background of the reanalysis of the going to construction. The theoretical prerequisites in the semantics of tense and aspect were provided in the previous section. We can now proceed and bring these two together. More speciWcally, I want to reconstruct what happens in semantic reanalysis in a step-by-step fashion, and in terms of truth conditional semantics. As in real life, this will take place on the basis of individual sentences (namely utterances). I will use the sentence in (4.20) as a sample case. However, we shall replace the indexical I by the name of the speaker, Horatio, in order to avoid additional complications. Hence we are concerned with the reanalysis of a sentence like (4.49): (4.49) Horatio is going to visit a friend I will Wrst consider the older literal meaning of the sentence, where the verb go relates to a physical movement and combines with an inWnite clause which contributes the purpose of the going. I will treat to as part of the inWnitive rather than a preposition (of purpose). The common core of the telic preposition to and the inWnitive marker granted, I know of no grammatical evidence which would support an analysis of to as a preposition here. Yet I do not think that this decision is crucial, because the analysis in (4.50) could easily be replaced by a slightly more complicated one where to introduces a purpose, a bare inWnitive describes that purpose, and go expresses a movement. The lambda term in (4.50a) represents the meaning of movement go which can combine with an inWnite predicate P which describes an event e’ and still lacks the subject x. The predicate is hence binary (type (e, (e,t) ) ). The resulting semantic object will still lack the subject phrase which will introduce the agent x (of both the going and P) and will eventually describe an event e of going-in-order-to-do-P. (4.50) a. ½½go- ¼ lP(e,(e,t) ) le lx ( Go( x,e) ^9e 0 (Prepare(e,e’) ^ P(x,e’) ) )
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To see what happens, we can take the semantic representation of the embedded clause in our example (4.49) and combine it with (4.50a). This is given in (4.50b) and (4.50c):12 (4.50) b. ½½to visit a friend ¼ lzle (9y( Friend(y, z) ^ Visit(z, y, e ) ) ) ‘set of people z and events e such that there is some friend (of z) whom z visits in e’ c. ½½go- to visit a friend ¼ lelx ( Go( x, e ) ^9e 0 ( Prepare(e, e’) ^ lzle(9y( Friend(y, z) ^ Visit(z, y, e ))! ) (x, e’))) ¼ lelx ( Go( x, e ) ^9 e’( Prepare(e, e’) ^ (9y( Friend(y, x) ^ Visit(x, y, e’))))) In (c), the relation in (b) is inserted in the argument place of P. As P is applied to the variables x and e’ in the overall term, this guarantees that the person who goes will be the same as the one who P-s, in this case: visits some friend of theirs. The resulting semantic representation has still not been combined with any temporal or aspectual information in sentence (4.49). This is indicated by the use of tenseless go-; in terms of meaning, we notice that (4.50c) does not yet relate the event to a speech time or reference time. Given that go is still the main verb of (4.49) under its older reading, tense and aspect will relate to the event of going, not yet to the event of visiting. In (4.50d), I give the result of applying the progressive to the given clausal root. As discussed in the previous section, the progressive aspect states that the event time t(e) of the event in question includes the reference time R. (4.50) d. ½½Progressive go- to visit a friend ¼ lx (9e(R t(e) ^ Go( x,e ) ^9 e’ ( Prepare(e, e’) ^ (9y( Friend(y, x) ^ Visit(x, y, e’) ) ) ) ) ) In prose, we have arrived at the property of being someone (x) such that at the time of reference there is an event e in progress which is a going by x and which happens in preparation of another event e’ in which x will visit some friend of his. Morphologically, the progressive aspect is expressed by the -ing
12 The reader will realize that there is actually an ambiguity hidden in (4.49): The speaker might either state his going with the purpose of visiting some friend or other (¼ narrow scope of the indeWnite) or, more likely, state that he was about to go to see a speciWc friend (¼ wide scope of the indeWnite). I will concentrate on the narrow scope reading mainly because semantic and syntactic structure are maximally parallel under this reading.
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form of the verb, and a form of auxiliary be. The tense form of be will Wnally determine the tense, in our case the present. Tense relates the time of reference R to the time of speech S. The present, in its simplest interpretation, expresses that S and R coincide. The result is shown in (4.50e). (4.50) e. ½½Present Progressive go- to visit a friend ¼ lx (R ¼ S ^ 9e(R t(e)^ Go(x, e ) ^9 e’ (Prepare(e, e’) ^ 9y(Friend(y, x) ^ Visit(x, y, e’) ) ) ) ) Finally, we will apply this predicate to the subject of the sentence, the denotation of the name Horatio. Following the practice introduced in Chapter 3, I will use Horatio as a label for the respective individual. (4.50) f. ½½Horatio Present Progressive go- to visit a friend ¼ 9e(R ¼ S ^ R t(e)^ Go(Horatio, e) ^ 9e 0 (Prepare(e,e’) ^ 9y (Friend(y, Horatio) ^ Visit(Horatio, y, e’ ) ) ) ) The sentence in (4.49) hence expresses the overall information that (i) the reference time of the narrative coincides with the speech time (the now), (ii) at that reference time, Horatio is going, (iii) this going by Horatio happens in preparation for another event e’ which is intended to be (iv) a visit by Horatio to some friend of Horatio. Apart from the fact that this paraphrase has become somewhat clumsy because it explicates all semantic parameters which are involved in the meaning of this sentence, it seems an adequate rendering of the contents of sentence (4.49). This exercise nicely demonstrated how the overall meaning came about by systematically combining the semantic representations of the parts—and these have not been invented just for the purpose, but will serve in the interpretation of any other sentences that use the respective words as well.13 Natural language sentences contain very clear and rigid instructions to build up pieces of information. The overall information conveyed does not come about by mere accumulation of concepts denoted by the parts. (The latter rather corresponds to the typical experience of the beginner in reading Latin, when dictionaries can supply the content of lexical words, but proWciency in identifying the intricate grammatical relations is still lacking.)
13 The only construction speciWc meaning is the one for go in combination with the to inWnitive. It seems reasonable to require a productive link between the semantics of the simple verb, and its meaning in such a purposive construction. Links like these have recently gained attention in formal semantics and are studied under the term ‘generative lexicon’; see Pustejovsky (1993, 1995).
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Let us consider the independent factors of the sentence in some more length: Tense, Aspect, tenseless verb, subject, and inWnitival embedded clause. (4.51) to (4.53) show that we can freely change tense and aspect. (4.51)
Horatio was going to see the doctor ½½ Horatio Past Progressive go- to see the doctor = 9e (R<S ^ R t (e) ^ Go( Horatio, e ) ^ 9e’(Prepare(e, e’) ^ 9y( Friend(y, Horatio) ^ Visit(Horatio, y, e’) ) ) )
(4.52) Horatio went to see the doctor ½½ Horatio Past Simple go- to see the doctor = 9e ( R<S ^ t (e) R ^ Go(Horatio, e ) ^ 9e’(Prepare(e, e’) ^ 9y( Friend(y, Horatio) ^ Visit(Horatio, y, e’ ) ) ) ) (4.53) Horatio had gone to see the doctor ½½ Horatio Past Perfect go- to see the doctor =14 9e ( R<S ^ t(e) < R ^ Go(Horatio,e ) ^ 9e’(Prepare(e,e’) ^ 9y(Friend(y, Horatio) ^ Visit(Horatio, y, e’ ) ) ) ) We can now proceed to the reanalysis process. The literal content of example (4.49), represented in (4.50f ), allows the default inference that the planned visit is imminent, assuming some world knowledge about Go and Prepare. (4.54) Inference: 9e’(Imminent(now, e’) ^ now< t(e’) ^ 9y(Friend(y, Horatio) ^ Visit(Horatio, y, e’ ) ) ) The English sentence (4.49) will give rise to this inference, as well as its German counterpart in (4.55): (4.55) Horatio geht einen Freund besuchen. This is a very good point to explicate a subtle but crucial distinction that was already alluded to in the discussion of the data in section 4.2. We saw that one important step in the development of the going to future was the mutual understanding of writers and readers/listeners that a certain kind of sentence (like (4.20), underlying our (4.49) ) was used in a certain kind of context not 14 This is a somewhat simpliWed treatment of the past perfect. A full treatment should be able to distinguish had gone and had been going, and explicate the intuition that (4.53) somehow states that Horatio was still away at the reference time. Still, the contribution of the past perfect should not shift the meaning of the lexical parts of the sentence.
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only to give rise to certain implications but as a conventional way to express a certain kind of proposition. The inference in (4.54) is hence not only an implication of (4.49), but a conventional implicature. Yet this is still not enough. The proposition (4.54) diVers in crucial ways from the semantic representations in (4.53), (4.52), (4.51), and (4.50f ) above. They all contain information about speech time and reference time, while (4.54) does not. Essentially, (4.54) as it stands is a good proposition but not a possible denotation of any sentence of English. The Wrst step towards semantic reanalysis, in this case, has to consist in indexicalizing (4.54) into something like (4.56): (4.56) ( R ¼ S ^ 9e’( Imminent(R, e’) ^ R < t(e’) ^ 9y( Friend(y, Horatio) ^ Visit(Horatio, y, e’ ) ) ) ) This would allow the speaker to understand, hypothetically, sentence (4.49) as a sentence in the present tense. The interpretation of the present will contribute the information that S ¼ R. Speakers can now continue to decompose (4.56) in a way which matches with the literal meaning of the parts of sentence (4.49). They will reasonably assume that the name Horatio will continually contribute the individual concept ‘Horatio’, and that the content of the inWnite clause contributes the event description in question: (4.57) a. ½½ visit a friend ¼ lz le 0 ( 9y( Friend(y, z) ^ Visit(z, y, e’ ) ) ) b. ½½ Horatio ¼ Horatio c. ½½ Present ¼ (R ¼ S) This leaves them with the Wnding that there remains a certain amount of lexical material, the be going to part, and on the side of meaning a missing operator which can contribute the remainder of the information encoded in (4.54). They can now proceed to solve the semantic equation and attribute the missing piece of meaning to the remnant lexical material:15 (4.58) remnant material ½½ be going to
()
missing meaning lP(e,(e,t) ) lx.9e ( R < t(e) ^ Imminent(R,e) ^ P(x,e) )
15 Somewhat embarrassingly, I can oVer no good reason for my decision to assume a bare inWnitive clause, and bracketing to with going. Another possible course would be to assume that the embedded clause was a to inWnitive with a bare auxiliary going, and that rebracketing only took place in a second step, perhaps to bring the construction closer to the common auxiliary pattern in English: Krug (2000) suggests a development along these lines. A closer investigation into the uses of bare versus to inWnitives around 1550 would be necessary in order to decide this question.
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Composition of the parts in (4.57) and (4.58) can now proceed in the regular way, and will, as shown in (4.59), yield exactly the target proposition in (4.56). (4.59) a. ½½ b- going to visit a friend ¼ lx 9e ( R < t(e) ^ Imminent(R,e) ^ lzle 0 ( 9y( Friend(y, z) ^ Visit(z, y, e’ ) )(x, e) ) ) ¼ lx9e ( R
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imminence, etc. and still hold a stable semantic core. This kind of semantic underspeciWcation has been extensively studied in recent years, not only in connection with the generative aspects of the lexicon (Pustejovsky 1995) but also in the framework of so-called two-level semantics (Bierwisch 1987, Do¨lling 1995, 1997). In Chapter 7, we will meet another word, lauter, which inherited this type of vagueness from the reanalysis process that gave rise to its current meaning. Chapter 6, however, will show a case where the contexts supporting reanalysis must have been homogeneous enough to yield a speciWc (i.e. non-underspeciWed) meaning for the emerging word, thus proving that reanalysis does not necessarily endorse open parameters. It is time to take a closer look into the parts involved in the semantic composition in (4.57) to (4.59). Clearly, the temporal information is processed in a transparent way, which is conWrmed by the observation that going to can be combined with all tenses: (4.60) Horatio was going to visit a friend Horatio had been going to visit a friend Horatio will be going to visit a friend (The use of stacked future tenses is defended in Cann 1993) It is somewhat diYcult to construct a case where both the licensing conditions for the present perfect and going to future are met, but once they are, this combination is also allowed: (4.61) (mocking about Horatio’s good intentions with respect to his aunt at Boston) Horatio has been going to visit his aunt ever since he moved to Boston. In contrast, the progressive is no longer a transparent component of the semantic evaluation of sentence (4.49) after reanalysis. There is no independent part [be + participle], and there is no part that would contribute the information that R t(e) for the event e introduced by the main verb. Consequently, it is disallowed to leave away the -ing part. Sentences in the simple tenses where the embedded clause disallows a movement interpretation of going to illlustrate the eVect. They are bad exactly because simple forms of go to are movement constructions. (4.62) *Horatio went to Wnish his talk at 5 o’clock. *Horatio had gone to like Paris. *The house will go to break down. It is interesting to note in that connection that the use of went to do to describe imminent events, as in example (4.27), was not compatible with
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the reanalysed interpretation of going to in the long run. These uses died out even though some authors with a liking for go- to constructions used them sometimes (a search in Roger Doyle’s Parthenissa (1656) yields some of the more Xowery examples). Eventually, went to do in the sense of turn to do seems to have been dropped in favour of a wider and coherent use of the going to future. The present analysis of the development of going to in the futurate sense proposes a speciWc way in which reliable meaning contributions are combined with open parameters to come up with meaning variation in a certain dimension. The speakers at the time, evidently, faced a double task: they were about to establish a new core meaning for going to on the basis of single utterances, and the evident meaning variation between single utterances needed to be integrated. Introducing the meta-concept of Imminence, they could host all the diVerent shades of immediacy, urgency, and planning that were referred to in individual utterances. Clearly, the reanalysis process depicted in (4.57)–(4.59) results in a reading of going to where no information about actual movement is conveyed. Consequently, the resulting construction automatically disallows any manner adverbials which would sortally be restricted to activities like ‘walking’, see (4.63). On the other hand, another former sortal restriction all of a sudden became superXuous: the original verb go in combination with a to inWnitive clause only makes sense if the embedded clause denotes an activity for which walking can be a reasonable preparation. (4.65) shows combinations where this is not the case. Horatio cannot reasonably move anywhere in order to stop talking, nor does it make sense to move in order to avoid alluding to a scandal. (4.63)
*Horatio is carefully/jumpingly/speedily/ . . . going to travel to Paris in May.
(4.64) *Horatio went to stop talking in Wve minutes/to avoid any allusions to the scandal. The new semantic content of going to in principle makes sense for any kind of complement which can be imminent—in the sense of an accepted range of ways of being imminent. The former sortal restrictions were no longer backed up by semantic content, and hence were lost quickly—in fact, it is hard to tell whether they were still there at all while speakers started using the new construction in an ever wider range of contexts. Finally, I want to draw attention to a very subtle observation reported in Hopper and Traugott (1993: 3). It will lend support to my main assumption that speakers possess, even for words and constructions-under-change, precise and speciWc lexical entries that license, and disallow, equally speciWc usage
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patterns. The authors observe a curious asymmetry in the use of diVerent future tenses in if-then clauses, oVering the minimal pair in (4.65)/(4.66): (4.65)
If interest rates are going to climb, we’ll have to change our plans.
(4.66) *If interest rates will climb, we’ll have to change our plans. They suggest for going to that ‘as an original aspectual, it can occur in constructions where a future formed with will cannot . . . This property of persistence of meaning presumably derives in part from the fact that the older be going (to . . . ) coexists with the newer use, and hence there is reinforcement of older meanings.’ Actually, it is not easy to see what this means with respect to a sentence like (4.65). Even though the older meaning of go to is still available, it is clearly not the one in use in (4.65). Presumably, only few people have such an intimate relation to interest rates as to personalize them and envisage them going out in order to engage in actual climbing. It is not clear what aspects of the semantics of the sentence should be reinforced by older meanings of going to here. The classiWcation of older going to as an ‘aspectual’ is not straightforward either. In its older uses in combination with a subordinate clause, go expresses a literal movement with a certain purpose. A classiWcation which would cover such verbs as ‘aspectuals’ must be extremely liberal. It should at least contain practically all movement verbs (Peter ran to buy bread, walked to buy bread, cycled to buy bread, jumped to get a towel from the top shelf, . . . ), perhaps also other verbs of change of posture (Peter lay down to tan, Peter stood up to get a drink), but then perhaps any verb that can combine with a purpose clause (Peter phoned Bill to get a new car, Peter worked to become rich), which could include practically any activity and accomplishment verb. But even if there were some reason to classify older going to as an aspectual, it is unclear why that should be of importance for if-then clauses. The if clause can in fact contain any kind of verb as long as it stands in an appropriate present tense form. The aspectual properties of the verb do not inXuence its acceptability in the antecedent of a conditional. (4.67) illustrates that stative verbs, states, progressives, and simple tenses can all occur in the antecedent of a conditional: (4.67) If Peter has Xu/owns a dog/is visiting Rome/went home yesterday . . . he will not come to the party tomorrow. Perhaps, the authors envisaged a principle of retaining old patterns of the following kind:
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The older going to was allowed to occur in if-clauses, and new going to can also, because speakers are conservative and tend to adhere to old phrasal patterns.
But this would certainly not be a universal principle in meaning change. Notably, this principle falsely predicts that (4.66) should be acceptable. The future auxiliary will, like going to, derives from a full verb will in the sense of ‘want’. This full verb also still exists, though rarer, in present-day English. The following example (approved by an native ESL teacher) shows that will in this older sense is still acceptable in the antecedent of a conditional: (4.68) If he will behave like an idiot, then people will treat him like one. The acceptability of (4.68) and the ungrammaticality of (4.66) together clearly show that the coexistence of older and newer meaning cannot be suYcient to license a word in the newer sense in some environment just because the word in the older sense would be licensed. I suggest that the real diVerence between the going to future and the will future that matters with respect to (4.65) is that a present tense sentence containing going to is about the present (¼ S) in a substantial sense while a will future is not. The going-to future in the present tense states that something is imminent at the time of speech S. Imminence can change over time. Something can have been non-imminent yesterday and be imminent today. Statements about future facts and events, in contrast, are true at any time before these facts and events hold and happen. We might know only at a comparatively late time that they are true, and hence cannot utter such sentences at arbitrary earlier times, but that does not change this basic fact. (4.69) and (4.70) illustrate the diVerence. (4.69) John will be at Stanford in May. Backward-entailing: if sentence S is true at t and t’ < t, then sentence S is also true at t’ (because John’s being in Stanford is also in the future of t’). (4.70) John is going to be at Stanford in May. Not backward-entailing: sentence might be true today (John made up his mind only this morning) but have been false yesterday (yesterday, John might have lacked some crucial information that led him to decide on this visit). Formally speaking, in the interpretation of bePRESENT going to do X, we locate the reference time R at the time of speech S (¼ Present, see 4.59b). In the interpretation of will do X, in contrast, we locate the reference time R after the time of speech S (¼ Future, see section 4.3). Given that non-counterfactual
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if-then constructions require a present tense in the if clause and a will/shall future in the then clause, we can readily explain the contrast in example (4.65)/(4.66). (I evidently ignore counterfactual if-then constructions of the <Past; would-do> kind here.) This fact about the diVerence between going to and will can only be captured by a Wne-grained semantic analysis like the one adopted here. Approaches where the semantics of future tense is given by conceptual primitives like Futurate, perhaps in company with further qualiWcations like Imminent, Intentional, or Volition, hardly oVer the formal means to draw such subtle distinctions. Danchev and Kyto¨ (1994: 70), operating in such a framework, report a number of unanalysed concepts like Present Orientation, Current Orientation, or Present Relevance that were suggested by various authors in order to capture the intuition that a sentence in the going to future is still somehow a statement about the present. Such shades in meaning will not be of immediate help to explain the contrast in (4.65). First of all, the restrictions for the if clause are primarily grammatical: if clauses are required to stand in the present tense and not to be of ‘current orientation’ in some conceptual sense. And then, it is hard to get intuitions about why the going to example in (4.65) is more oriented to the present than its will counterpart in (4.66). Both statements are primarily hypothetical: if matters are such-and-such. Of course, it might not be impossible to combine a masterly tailored theory of Current Orientation with a suitably constructed theory for if-then clauses in order to explain these data. However, this is certainly a non-trivial aVair. Hopper and Traugott (1993) at least sought a solution in a completely diVerent direction rather than entering into this tedious enterprise. The great advantage of an account of the grammaticalization of going to in terms of truth conditional semantics is that we get results like these practically for free, by combining our diachronic Wndings with the rich body of research in synchronic linguistics that we have readily available.
4.5 Summary In this chapter, I took up the development of going to from a movement construction to a construction that expresses a statement about the future. I agreed with the general approach of Hopper and Traugott (1993) who assume that the change is driven by the pragmatic inference from a ‘movement in order to do X’ to ‘do X in the near future’. Traugott and Dasher (2002) reWne this picture by distinguishing between the occasional invited inference and general invited inferences. The latter reXect a stage where a sentence with
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going to is habitually associated with an inference rather than by case-to-case reasoning. In section 4.2 I sought to reWne our understanding of the contexts in which reanalysis of going to sentences took place. The phase in which the construction gradually emerged had been located between 1550 and 1650 by previous research, but little was known about the actual locus of reanalysis. This lack of knowledge is moreover evidenced indirectly by the observation that everything that had so far been said about the going to construction in English at the crucial time can be stated with equal right about the tun gehen and gehen, zu tun constructions in German since at least 1762. Nevertheless, while English developed a futurate use of going to German did not. Searching three databases for the relevant period, I could list a considerable number of uses of going to which shared the following characteristics: . The hearer/reader (in drama: the audience, not the Wctional hearer) had no possibility of controlling whether the speaker was involved in a real movement (in drama: whether the Wction implied a movement of the protagonist). . The speaker/author intended to convey the intentions of himself/of the protagonist for the near future. All but one occurred in dramas, while private and oYcial correspondence contained fewer uses of futurate go in the relevant early stages. This suggests that the construction was mainly developing in the tension between literary author and their audience rather than in everyday spoken language. I hypothesized that the construction gained further popularity because it oVered a way to express the intentions of a person by making use of a certain participial construction [ N [ V-ing to do x ] ] (e.g.: John, going to be married soon) which was extremely common. A comparison with German at the same and later times shows that tun gehen never entered into a similar constellation. Early German translations of English plays (hypothesized initial point of the development) do not make use of tun gehen at any place, sometimes using gehen und tun conjunctions instead. Later German translations of English plays reXect that while German was in possession of tun gehen, this construction was carefully avoided as soon as the translator wanted to highlight the protagonists’ intentions rather than their physical movements. The current conventions in the use of gehen tun in German do not suggest a likely turn to a futurate use. In section 4.4 the reanalysis process was accounted for in terms of formal semantics. Starting from the construction go (in order) to do x, we traced the pragmatic implications that can be derived from going to sentences. Against
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the general background given in section 4.3 it became clear that semantic reanalysis did not take place on the basis of the pragmatic inferences, but required a somewhat richer proposition, particularly one which speciWes the temporal parameters R and S. This is one aspect of the hearer’s understanding that the crucial proposition p comes about as the literal meaning of the respective sentence rather than as an implication. The framework of formal semantics enables us to spell out what happens if a given going to sentence undergoes reanalysis. The literal content of a sentence gives rise to an implication which, with certain amendments, might be the literal meaning of the sentence under another reading of be going to. The meanings of all parts of the sentence were explicated and related to the putative new meaning p of the sentence. It turned out that a composition of p from the meanings of the parts of that given sentence was possible, assuming only one change: in the meaning of be going to. Attributing the ‘missing bit of meaning’ to the phrase be going to, speakers could complete the composition and got a fairly speciWc idea about the meaning contribution of be going to in its new sense, even though they had basically only dealt with one sentence. The analysis also illustrates how reanalysing speakers can deal with a certain degree of semantic variation in the utterances that suggest reanalysis. Speakers used the cover term Imminence(R,e) to reXect that the occurrence of the prospective event was in some way or other always determined at the time of reference, while the speciWc nature of this determinedness might vary from context to context. The account likewise suggests that the newly emerging be going to was very speciWc in other respects. For instance, the progressive aspect ceased to be a transparent part of the construction and consequently could no longer be replaced by the simple form. The construction was therefore not compatible with the older went to do phrase in the sense of ‘turn to do x’. The latter, rather than being enhanced by the growing popularity of the superWcially similar be going to, died out in subsequent years. The be going to construction in its futurate sense was and currently still is a pseudo-future in the sense that the tense form of be determines the relation between reference time and speech time, and only the lexical content of be going to contributes that the event in question e will happen after R but is already Imminent at R. This analysis Wnally can predict the diVerent behaviour of present tense be going to and will future in the antecedent of a conditional: the former makes a real Present tense statement about the imminence of an event. The latter expresses a real future tense. Given that if clauses require a present tense, this will explain Hopper and Traugott’s intriguing minimal pair of if-then sentences in a simple and elegant manner.
5 From Step to Negation: The Development of French Complex Negation Patterns 5.1 Introduction The present chapter investigates the grammaticalization of the nouns pas (¼ ‘step’), mie (¼ ‘crumb’), goutte (¼ ‘drop’), point (¼ ‘point’), rien (¼ ‘thing’), and personne (¼ ‘person’, ‘man’) by which they became parts of a complex negation: ne pas, ne mie, ne goutte, ne personne, ne point, and ne rien in French. I will draw attention to the fact that in the early stages of this development, the items in question regularly show ‘puzzling uses’ that have received little investigation so far. I propose that the Wrst stage in the development of complex negation—commonly termed ‘emphatic negation’—is in fact a stage where the items in question are polarity sensitive (NPIs). It will be demonstrated how the so-called pragmatic theory of polarity sensitivity can oVer a full explanation of the development, including the ‘puzzling uses’. There is a long tradition of investigation into the origin of French complex negation, dating back at least to the work of Schweickha¨user (1852), Perle (1876), or Schulze (1888) in the nineteenth century, passing the seminal work on negation by Otto Jespersen (Jespersen 1917). More recent treatments on the development of negation, like LaBrum (1982), Schwegler (1986), Posner (1997), or Catalani (2001), witness a continuing interest in the topic. Authors largely agree on the major steps of the development: the respective nouns enter into emphatic negation constructions, are generalized beyond their original literal content, and Wnally become part of a regular negation as their emphatic quality fades away. This matches the picture proposed by Jespersen (1917) which gained fame as the ‘Jespersen cycle’. Being concerned with only one passage through the cycle, I will also refer to the Jespersen cline.
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Scholars who aim at a full description of the grammar of Old and Middle French often note that words in the early stages of the Jespersen cline show seemingly unsystematic uses. Paying attention not only to those examples which illustrate the straight Jespersen cline but to the full spectrum of data, Lucien Foulet in his Petite Syntaxe de l’ancien franc¸ais (1965: 244) states about one of the negation particles (auxiliaires de la ne´gation1) ‘C’est donc qu’a` tort ou a` raison la langue lui reconnaıˆt une valeur positive . . .’ (‘hence, with or without justiWcation, language acknowledges it to have a positive sense’). Some pages later, uses of mie are commented on with ‘Mais la signiWcation litte´rale de toutes ces phrases n’est-elle pas extreˆmement curieuse?’ (‘but the literal content of all these sentences, isn’t it extremely peculiar?’) and the next paragraph starts with a resigned sigh: ‘Apre`s cela il ne sera pas surprenant de trouver le mot employe´ . . . dans des phrases positives’ (‘After that, it will not be surprising to Wnd the word used in positive sentences’, Foulet 1965: 264 f., my trans.) In brief, we Wnd a considerable number of uses of pas, point, mie, goutte, etc. which are ‘puzzling’: they are neither based on the words’ original, literal senses, nor are they simply early uses in connection with a negation (non, ne), be it emphatic or otherwise. The greater part of section 5.2 will be concerned with the presentation of such ‘puzzling uses’. They are mentioned by comprehensive treatments of Old French (Meyer-Lu¨bke 1890–1902, Diez 1877, Schweickha¨user 1852, Foulet 1965, Posner 1984 for modern Romance languages); only few attempt an explanation. Commonly, the emergence of French complex negation is presented as a gradual process where a continuous downtuning of original literal content is accompanied by an equally continuous upgrading of negative value. ‘Puzzling examples’ are suggested to arise as a kind of accident, where the downtuning of original sense is not accompanied quickly enough by a suYcient upgrading in negativity value (although, consolingly, the contexts in which puzzling uses occur can still be diagnosed to be ‘somehow negative’ at least, see Grevisse 1994: § 981). The aim of my study is to demonstrate that the puzzling data in fact witness a completely systematic, coherent stage in the emergence of complex negation via emphatic negation. The key question to ask—and one that, to my knowledge, no investigation of the history of negation in French has yet addressed—is: what does it mean to be an ‘emphatic negation’? Can we decompose this notion and trace the overall ‘emphatic’ impression back to the meaning contributions of parts of the construction? A careful semantic/ 1 I will use the term ‘particle’ to avoid all commitments as to whether, when, and why these items are nounlike, adverb-like, or similar to any other grammatical category.
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pragmatic analysis of this intermediate stage in the history of complex negation in French will reveal that negation particles in emphatic negations are in fact so-called negative polarity items.2 This analysis predicts the empirical Wndings about puzzling uses of negation particles with great precision. And even more: it shows that the lack of puzzling uses would be much more puzzling than their occurrence. The present account will hence allow us to appreciate the great coherence of the sequence of synchronic stages of a language. The seemingly ‘puzzling’ uses of the particles pas, personne, mie, etc. are not the result of careless language use or conceptual shifting and drifting. On the contrary, speakers at each stage in the development of complex negation in French were just consequently using these words in their then-present senses. I will present the data in section 5.2 and oVer a careful introduction to a theory of emphatic negation in section 5.3. In section 5.4 I will bring together these two and reconstruct the development of negation particles as a systematic and coherent pathway of semantic change. Section 5.5 will sum up and discuss the Wndings.
5.2 The Data Let me Wrst recapitulate some well-known facts about the use of negation in late Latin and Old French. Latin expressed sentence negation by non which appeared fairly freely in some preverbal position (Schwegler 1986): (5.1) diYcile est saturam non scribere (‘it is diYcult not to write satire’, Juvenal) non haec sine numine divum eveniunt (‘These things do not happen without the will of the gods’, Aeneas) We also Wnd emphatic negations on the basis of the use of words that denote small quantities—a pattern which will soon be subject to closer investigation. While some of the examples are fully transparent (each word contributes its literal meaning), we also Wnd examples like (5.2) where the noun expressing a small quantity is used in a non-literal manner (all examples after Va¨a¨na¨nen 1967: 162 f.): (5.2) non micam mentis sanae habere not crumb of-mind sane have ‘be completely crazy’ 2 According to modern linguistic terminology, ‘negative polarity items’ are expressions that can only be used in speciWc negative contexts. The English opposition of some versus any oVers one of the most prominent examples of the phenomenon (any being the negative polarity item). A more thorough introduction will be given in section 4.3.
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(5.3) non licet transversum digitum discedere not allowed-is breadth of-a Wnger go-away ‘it is not allowed to move (even) a Wnger’s breadth’ (5.4) non vales uno coco not are-worth a pip ‘you are worth nothing’ Our record of Old French negation starts around the year 900. Even in the oldest texts, we Wnd emphatic negations on the basis of the nouns pas, mie, goutte, point, rien, and personne. The following examples, all taken from Tobler-Lommatzsch’s dictionary of Old French (¼ TL), illustrate the point.3 A consultation of any work on Old French negation or source text will easily provide further examples. (5.5) Personne par sa vanterie Ne sera pour ce plus prisı¨e. person by his boasting not will-be for this more praised ‘Nobody will be more appreciated for his boasting’. ([I. Ys. l. 328], TL vi. 796, 11) (5.6) Ne vus leist pas aler avant (¼ non licet vobis procedere), not you is-allowed ‘pas’ to-go forward Quar poi estes a ¸co savant. because little you-are in this knowing ‘You may not go forward a step, because you are ignorant (lit.: little knowing) about this.’ ([Benedeit SBrendan, l. 1793], TL vi. 411, 26) (5.7) Mais a bataille n’oset il pas venir but to battle not-dared he ‘pas’ come ‘but to battle did he not dare at all (¼ a step) to come.’ ([Canc¸ Guillelme, l. 81], TL vi. 411, 29) (5.8) Quel part qu’il alt, ne poet mie ca¨ir which part that-he goes not can ‘mie’ fall ‘Wherever he goes, he cannot fall a bit (¼a crumb).’ ([Ch. Rol. l. 2034], TL vi. 15, 23)
3 Richer collections of examples for the process under scrutiny can be found in Eckardt (2003a). I will limit myself to selected representative cases here. Wherever possible, I give references to the original source of a passage as well as the secondary text or dictionary. Unfortunately, the philological practice of referencing was sometimes fairly austere in the nineteenth century such that I was not able to trace the original source for all quotes.
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(5.9) Si fait oscur, ne veient gote, ne ne sevent tenir lor rote so makes dark not they-see ‘gote’ nor not they-know hold theirway ‘It is so dark, they don’t see anything (¼ not a drop), nor do they know to keep their way.’ ([En. l. 195], TL iv. 465, 16) (5.10) Il ist fors des rens, si s’avance Vers le paien he steps out-of the ranks if REFL-approaches to the heathen qu’il n’ aime goute whom-he not likes ‘goute’ ‘He steps out of the ranks, and approaches towards the heathen whom he does not like at all (¼ a drop)’. ([EscouXe, l. 1183], TL iv. 466, 6) (5.11) D’avanture ne sai je rien N’onques me`s n’an o¨i parler of-adventure not know I ‘rien’ nor-ever more not-of-it I-hear talk ‘Of adventure I don’t know anything, not ever more did I hear talk about it’. ([Ch. lyon, l. 368], TL viii. 1279, 38) (5.12) Belin ne crienst point sa manace Ne nule rien que Brennes face. Belin not fears ‘point’ his threat nor no thing that Brennes would-do ‘Belin doesn’t fear his threatening a bit (¼ a point), nor anything that Brennes does’. ([Brut Arn., l. 2529], TL vii. 2118, 37) The examples show that the respective nouns are used in a non-literal sense under negation. It would be meaningless and not even licensed by argument structure to use goute (‘drop’) as second object of aimer (‘like’), point (‘point’) as an additional object of criendre (‘fear’), to combine pas (‘step’) with oser (‘dare’). They also show marked syntactic behaviour; most importantly, they lack determiners which generally are on the rise in Old French (un(e) ¼ ‘one/ a’, ce ¼ ‘this’, lei ¼ ‘the’, mainz ¼ ‘many’, tous ¼ ‘all’, etc.). The distribution of goutte, mie, pas, and point and the gradual replacement of bare negation non/ne by complex negation phrases has received thorough investigation. While mie and pas have been shown to be dialectal variants (Price 1962), the use of goutte is restricted sortally to verbs of perception ne veoir goute, ne oeir goute (‘not see anything’, ‘not hear anything’), to the combination with abstract nouns—goute de foi (‘faith’), goute de raison (‘reason’)—as well as some other nouns, for instance argent (‘money’) where it is again used in a non-literal sense (Foulet 1965 oVers a nice overview). An extensive statistical survey of the situation in Middle French is provided in Catalani (2001). The traditional
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grammars of Diez (1877) and Meyer-Lu¨bke (1890–1902) outline the development against the background of a general historical treatment of the grammar of French, and a lucid account of the history of French in terms of current syntactic theory is oVered in Posner (1997). The cyclic development in which (i) a simple negation is augmented by additional material marking emphasis (ii) the additional material turns from optional to obligatory (iii) further morphophonological reduction leads back to simple negation was Wrst proposed by Otto Jespersen (1917). French foreshadows even the Wnal step: pas, rien, personne with increasing frequency are used without ne to express negation. The common simpliWed summary of the stages of the development is given in (5.13). (5.13) non/ne ! ne (pas) ! ne pas ! (ne) pas –?! pas The loss of ne, perceived as a process of ‘decay’ by oYcial prescriptive grammar, has likewise been subject to investigation. It was shown that the development took its origin in questions with ne-less negation (see Ashby 1991, Price 1993, and earlier Schweickha¨user 1852, Schulze 1888, and Bieringer 1910), spreading from there to other contexts at least since the sixteenth century (Frantext). So far, the development looks very straightforward. Taking a closer look into the uses of pas, point, goutte, mie, rien, and personne in Old French,4 we Wnd uses which are licensed neither by the literal meaning of the original noun, nor as part of a negation. These ‘puzzling uses’ commonly are cut short in descriptions of the Jesperson cycle, even though some scholars mention them, and some among these even acknowledge that there seems to be a certain coherence between ‘puzzling uses’ and emphatic negation (e.g. Schweickha¨user 1852). The uses are described as ‘positive’ or ‘positive indeWnite’, and they are always determinerless (which becomes more and more signiWcant in later times). If we attempt to translate them into a modern language like English or German, an adequate translation will always make use of a negative polarity item (like ‘in any way’, ‘to any degree’, ‘ever’, etc.). Most importantly, scholars agree that such positive indeWnite uses are restricted to certain contexts. A survey in dictionaries and other linguistic work shows that puzzling uses of negation particles are reported in the antecedent (si-clause) of a conditional, in comparative constructions, in real and rhetorical questions, under negation and negative verbs, in the scope of Old French (900–1300; we also need to touch Middle French, 1300–1650). For a critical deWnition of the stages of French see Posner (1997: 14 V.). 4
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sans (‘without’), a` peine (‘hardly, rarely’), in indirect questions, with temporal adverbs like avant que (‘before’), and in the restrictor of universal quantiWcation. I will now list and discuss examples that illustrate each case. The examples in (5.14) to (5.16) show positive uses of mie, point, and rien in the antecedent of a conditional: (5.14)
Por vos sui en prison misse . . . , Mais . . . longement n’i for you I-am in prison put but for-long not-there serai prise, se jel puis mie, . . . I-will-be taken if I-it can ‘mie’ ‘For you I am put in prison, but not for long will I be kept there, if I can anyhow ( can do anything about it).’ ([Auc 5.25], TL vi. 17, 15)
(5.15)
Se riens sor ces engins montoit, La porte d’amont if ‘rien’ on these engines would-mount the door of-above desc¸andoit, would-descend ‘If anything mounted onto these engines, the door would come down from above.’ ([Ch. lyon, l. 919], TL viii. 1281, 36)
(5.16) E sout bien que li reis en sereit mult blasmez, and he-knew well that the king thereby would-be much embarrassed Se Thomas l’arcevesque i fust point mesmenez if Thomas the-archbishop there were ‘point’ harmed ‘And he knew well that it would be very shaming for the king if Archbishop Thomas were harmed in any way.’ ([SThom. W., l. 4730], TL vii. 2120, 26–8) They highlight with particular clarity in what sense ‘puzzling uses’ go astray from the straight Jespersen cline. Consider the sentence in (5.16): the item point is clearly not used in the sense ‘point’ of the older noun. The verb does not oVer any argument slot that could be occupied by point. However, the item point does not serve to reinforce any negation either. The si-clause is not about not hurting Archbishop Thomas, but creates the counterfactual scenario of hurting him. The semantic contribution of point is reXected in the translation by ‘in any way’; we could also say ‘in the least’. This use of point is certainly intuitively plausible, but it is not predicted by the stages of the Jespersen cline. Comparatives oVer another good illustration for the same eVect.
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(5.17) le plus vaillant, le plus entier c’on trovast mie en tout le the most brave the most whole that-one Wnd ‘mie’ in whole the monde world ‘the most brave, the most accomplished that one Wnds ever in the whole world’ ([Rich, l. 4819] TL vi. 17, 22) (5.18) elle est trop mieulx meisonnee que nulle aultre cite´ she is much better housed than ‘nulle’ other town que nous ayons point veu¨e ou chemy that we have ‘point’ seen or passed ‘It is built much better than any other city that we have ever seen or travelled to.’ ([S. d’Angl., l. 233], TL vii. 2119, 45–7) (5.19) qu’elle l’estimoit trop homme de bien pour dire mal that-she him-took too man of good for say bad de personne du monde of ‘personne’ of-the world ‘that she took him to be too honourable a man to be able to talk badly about anyone in the world’ (Marguerite de Navarre, 1550: 255) Particularly in (5.17), we see that mie occurs in a positive sense in the superlative description without any negation in context. It translates neither as ‘crumb’ nor as ‘not’ but contributes the modiWcation ‘in the widest sense’. Interestingly, mie is frequently used in a temporal sense ‘ever’; (5.17) shows one example. Direct and indirect questions likewise occur with ‘puzzling’ uses of negation particles. The following examples illustrate this case. (5.20) el cors me Were goute, Se je ne sai . . . s’il voient goute! the body me strike gout if I not know if-they see ‘goute’ ‘In my body strike me the gout, if I do not learn . . . if they see even anything.’ ([Barb. u. M., III. 399, 32 (Des trois avugles de Compiengne).], TL iv. 465, 11) ¨ istes vos s’il (5.21) O vendra mie? Heard you if-he will-come ‘mie’ ‘Did you hear if he will ever come?’ (TL vi. 17, 31)
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(5.22) Toutesfois, pour tant que messire Jehan Pare demandoit anyway for as-much that Mr Jean Pare asked partout se personne avoit veu sa geline everywhere if ‘personne’ had seen his hen ‘Anyway, even though Master Jehan Pare asked everywhere whether anybody had seen his hen . . .’ (Philippe de Vigneulles, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, 1515: Nouvelle 5, p. 76) (5.23) Me`s de la re¨ine chenu¨e Me dites, se vos la ve¨istes Et se vos point but of the queen white me tell if you her saw and if you ‘point’ li anque¨istes, Qui ele est et dont ele vint her asked who she be and where from she come ‘But tell me if you have seen the white queen, and whether you have asked her at all who she is and whence she comes.’ ([Perc. H., l. 8728], TL vii. 2120, 14–16) The passages in (5.22) and (5.23) are truly indirect speech, embedded under verbs of reporting (‘tell’, ‘ask’). The quote in (5.19) shows goutte (‘drop’) in an indirect question embedded under a negation but, once more, goutte does not contribute to the negation in the matrix clause. Instead, it contributes a modiWcation in the ‘to the least degree’ sense. The next quotes show puzzling uses in direct questions. (5.24) Me convient il de riens de vos guaitire? to-me be-appropriate it of ‘rien’ to you guard-against ‘Would it be for me to guard against you in any respect?’ ([Cor. Lo., l. 2129], TL viii. 1286, 3) (5.25) Resanble je point a celui Qui sol . . . vos secorut a cel besoin? resemble I ‘point’ to him who alone you saved in this need ‘Do I in any way resemble the one who alone . . . helped you in this need?’ ([Fol. Trist. B, l. 390], TL vii. 2120, 3 f.) We also Wnd negation particles in a positive sense under certain temporal adverbs, and in the restrictor of universal quantiWers (i.e. as part of the description of the set we quantify over). Once again, no negations are involved and yet, the respective particles are not used in their original literal sense. (5.26) Quand ilz eurent disne´, avant que personne se levast de table, when they had dined before that ‘personne’ REFL raised of table il se print a` leur dire ainsi en la presence de sa femme: he REFL took to them say so in the presence of his wife
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‘Messieurs et mes Dames, vous sc¸avez combien de temps Gentlemen and my Ladies you know how-much of time il y a que j’ay espouse´ votre parente . . . there-is that I-have espoused your relative ‘When they had dined and before anyone stood up from the table, he started to tell them so in the presence of his wife . . .’ (Bonaventure des Pe´riers, Nouvelles Recreations I, 1558: Nouvelle VI, p. 383) (5.27)
Et ce puet bien avenir tost Que cil muert, ainz ke point and that can well come soon that thisone dies before that ‘point’
en ost of-it takes ‘And it may well happen soon that this one dies before he even takes the smallest bit of it’. ([RBlois I, p. VIII], TL vii. 2119, 20 f.) (5.28) Ne Wnerai onques d’errer Tant con porrai nes point aler not I-will-end ever to-roam as-long that-one can not ‘point’walk ‘I will never stop roaming so long as one can walk in any way/at all.’ ([Fol. Trist. B, l. 115], TL vii. 2119, 34 f.) Que ja trop ne (5.29) C’est drois a home qui riens vaille that-is law for man who ‘rien’ worth-has that PRT too not soit reposez, Por que il veille estre alosez; Car nus ne be rested for that he wants be praised because noone not se puet aloser Qui son cors aime a reposer REFL can praise who his body likes to rest ‘this is the law for all men who are worth anything that they shall not rest too much in order to be praised; because nobody whose body loves to rest can make himself praised.’ ([Cont. Perc. R I 99, 3656], TL viii. 1285, 11)
The quotes in (5.26) to (5.28) involve the temporal connections ‘before’ and ‘as long as’. Example (5.29) shows how rien (‘anything’) is used in a universal quantiWcation over ‘men who are worth anything’. All examples so far occurred in contexts that can hardly be classed as ‘negative’ and therefore show with particular strikingness that positive uses of negation particles cannot simply be licensed by the mere presence of a negation. However, many positive uses in fact do occur in contexts of a ‘negative’ character. In (5.30) we see goutte embedded under a` peine (¼ hardly); the next examples show positive uses of goutte and point under sans (‘without’).
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(5.30)
tant par pleut desveement Et si tres deslaveement Qu’ a poine so there rained madly and so very ‘oV-washing’ that hardly puet nus vo¨oir goute can-one us see ‘goutte’ ‘It rained so madly, and so very ‘‘oV-washing’’, that one hardly could see us at all.’ ([GCoins., 220, 367], TL iv. 465, 36)
(5.31)
errent et jour et nuit Sans ce que goute they-walk-about and day and night without this that ‘goutte’ leur ennuit, them annoys ‘They go both day and night without this annoying them even in the least.’ ([JBruyant, 20b], TL iv. 466, 11)
(5.32) Faites Franchois tout no regne vuidier, Voisent en France, make French all our kingdom leave they-shall-go to France sans point de l’atargeir! without ‘point’ to them-delay ‘Make the French leave our kingdom, They shall travel to France without any delay ([Mon. Guill., l. 4133], TL vii. 2118, 11 f.) Verbs with a negative sense (‘not doing something’) also oVer a possible context for positive uses of negation particles and, Wnally, we Wnd them under negations but in a positive sense—that is, not as part of the negation but with an independent, positive contribution to meaning. (5.33) Mais toutefoiz, pource que vostre cas n’estoit pas bien honeste, but anyhow because that your case not-be pas well honest gardez vous bien d’en rien dire a personne. beware you well to-of-it ‘rien’ say to ‘personne’ ‘Anyhow, as your case is not quite honest, take care not to tell anything to anyone of it’. (Cent Nouvelles, 1456–67: 42) (5.34) N’otrei pas, s’il est pris, qu’um l’en laist mie aler not-allow-I pas if-he is taken that-one him-from-there lets ‘mie’ go ‘I do not allow, if he is taken, that one lets him ever go away from there.’ ([SThom. l. W, 1274], TL vi. 16, 23) (5.35) N’i ot rei, prince ne baron, Qui pas m’i po¨ust contrester not-there has king princenorbaron who‘pas’me-therecouldcontradict
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‘There is no king, prince or baron who could even in the least contradict me there.’ ([Troie, l. 16865], TL vii. 410, 31) (5.36) E veirement, ¸co n’est pas doute A nuli qui de foi eit goute, and truly there not-is pas doubt to no-one who of belief has ‘goutte’ Qe quanqe par lui est escrit Ne seit fait par seint Esperit, that what by him is written not be made by holy spirit ‘And truly, there is no doubt for anyone who has even a drop of belief, that what is written by him is not made by the Holy Spirit.’ ([VGreg. A, l. 158.], TL iv. 464, 25) Note that the French matrix verb garder in (5.33), unlike its English translation, does not require any overt negation. French se garder de faire (like German sich hu¨ten, zu tun) corresponds to the English complex phrase take care not to do which makes the negation explicit. In (5.34) to (5.36) the negations in the matrix clause are overt: ‘not allowing’, the determiner ‘no king such that’, and ‘no doubt’. Let me locate the puzzling uses on the time scale, taking a closer look at the behaviour of pas which seems to constitute a special case. Positive uses of mie and goutte occur mostly in the period of Old French. The particle mie can be found in a wide variety of contexts in the sense of ‘anyhow’, but interestingly also in a temporal sense ‘ever’, while goutte is not used with similar Xexibility and frequency. The uses of determinerless goutte in negative polar contexts cease already in Middle French, as witnessed by Catalani (2001) or the Frantext corpus. Note as an aside that the (grammatically regular) noun phrase une (seule) goutte (¼ a single drop) replaces its predecessor—bare goutte—as a negative polarity item in Middle French. Like its predecessor, it can combine with verbs of perception and abstract nouns, and examples like (5.37) can be found in Frantext: (5.37) Or leur idolatrie est plus lourde beaucoup, so their idolatry is more serious much et ne sont point une seule goutte plus purs en doctrine, and not are ‘point’ ‘a single drop’ more pure in doctrine voire s’ils n’y sont plus impurs. truly if-they not-there are more impure ‘. . . so their idolatry is much more severe, and they are not a single drop more pure in their doctrine, indeed they may be even more impure’ (Jean Calvin, Institution chrestienne 1560: book IV, ch. II, p. 49) The noun point appears to be least advanced on the Jespersen cline. Emphatic uses are still in full blossom in Middle French, and are accompanied
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by a rich choice of ‘puzzling uses’ which I could draw not only from Tobler-Lommatzsch but also from Catalani (2001) on Early Middle French. Even in modern French, point has retained its value of reinforcing negation— in opposition to pas—yet only as a stylistic feature. This distinction, seeming perhaps over-reWned at this point, will gain importance in section 5.5 where we will be able to draw a clear line between emphatic negation as a semantic contribution in contrast to emphatic negation in the sense of a stylistic signal. Finally, both Posner (1984: 4) and the handbook of good use of French, Grevisse’s Le Bon Usage, state that positive indeWnite uses of personne and rien are possible in modern French of literary register. The following sentences are oVered as an exempliWcation: (5.38) Est-il rien de plus agre´able que de manger ici? is-it ‘rien’ of more agreeable than to eat here ‘Is there anything more agreeable than to eat here?’ (Posner 1984: 4, ModF in literary use) (5.39) Connaissez-vous personne qui ait pu faire cela? know-you ‘personne’ who had can do this ‘Do you know anyone who would have been able to do this?’ (Posner 1984: 5) (5.40) Je doute que personne y re´ussisse. ‘I doubt that anyone might succeed at it.’ Il ne veut pas que personne soit le´se´. ‘He does not want anyone to be oVended.’ Je suis meilleur juge que personne ‘I am a better judge than anyone.’ Partez avant que personne vous voie ‘Leave before anyone might see you.’ (all from Grevisse 1994: § 981) The negation particle pas is commonly viewed as the most classic example of the Jespersen cline in French. It is held to be the Wrst that entered in grammaticalization (Foulet 1965: § 377), and we Wnd it in combination with negation (non/ne) already in the Chanson de Roland (c.1080, one of the oldest documents in Old French) where it occurs with a wide variety of verbs that do not express movement of any kind, as in l. 681: ne devoir pas blasmer ¼ ‘may not annoy’; l. 980: n’y peut pas creistre ¼ ‘cannot grow there’; or l. 1528: qui pas ne fut produme ¼ ‘who was not an honourable man’. I cannot judge to what extent the construction bears any emphatic value at that stage. SigniWcantly,
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texts of about the same time like Cantile`ne de sainte Eulalie (late 9th century), La Vie de saint Le´ger (mid 10th century), or Cantile`ne de saint Alexis (second half 11th century, all in Rochette 1912) contain a lot of passages where some proposition is emphatically denied, all of them making use of more Xowery constructions, e.g.:5 (5.41) par nule guise ne l’en puet om blasmer by no way not him-of-it can one blame (Vie de saint Alexis, l. 65) ‘in no way can one blame him for this’ Tobler-Lommatzsch list a large number of quotes where ne pas, according to their judgement, translates as ‘not in any way, not in the least’, but to some extent this intuition might be driven by the professional expectations of the grammarian. In fact, most of the uses of ne pas in the early documents can well be understood without assuming any particular emphasis. Truly ‘puzzling uses’ for pas are rare, and almost exclusively occur in the scope of an explicit negation, even though not as part of negation (see examples (5.34) to (5.36) above). The following four sentences comprise the total returns of my search. (5.42) Me`s de nului ne li est tant De ceus qui la vont confortant, . . . but of no-one not her is so-much of those who her came consoling [Var.] Qu’ ele pas lest son duel a feire that she ‘pas’ leaves her grief to do ‘But none of those who came to comfort her meant so much to her that she would even in the least stop showing her grief.’ ([Erec, l. 6105], TL vii. 410, 16) (5.43)
Car il n’a suz ciel rei de because there not-has under sky king of pas turner le quer ne le pense´ ‘pas’ turn the heart nor the thought ultre sa volente´ beyond his will
si so De of
grant po¨este´ Ki puisse big power who could nul hume suz ciel no man under sky
A very nice example for the case of parallel ne mie can be found in the Pe`lerinage de Charlemagne (anon., late 11th century). Charles the Great meditates (l. 103) that La soe manantise ne priset mie un gant ¼ ‘he does not consider its (¼the palace’s) value to be of even a glove’s worth’. While the negation is expressed by ne mie, the emphasis clearly arises by the use of the pejorative a glove’s worth. The noun glove frequently serves as a negative polar item to express the worthlessness of something, see Schweickha¨user’s picturesque collection (1852). 5
142
From Step to Negation ‘Because there is no king under the sky who is so powerful that he could even in the least change heart or mind of any man against his will.’ ([SThom.W, l. 644], TL vii. 410, 19)
(5.44) N’en i a nul, grant ne petit, Qui pas oblit la grant not-of there has none big nor small who ‘pas’ forgot the big dolor Qu’ont rece¨u de lor seignor harm that-they-have got from their master ‘There is nobody, neither old nor young, who had even in the least forgotten the great harm they had got from their Master.’ ([Troie, l. 16865], TL vii. 410, 29) (5.45) (La montaigne fu haute et li val reonda, Devant ne truevent voie, car un point n’en i a;) Onques n’i ot si sage, quant il se regarda, never not-there had so wise when he REFL saw Qui peu¨st pas savoir par ou il i entra. who could ‘pas’ know by where he there entered (‘The mountains were high and surrounded the valley. They found no way forward because there was none.) There was never such a clever man who, if he had looked around, would have known how he had got in. (Roman d’Alexandre, 1185: La troisie`me branche; 3. 148, l. 2489) These examples constitute ‘puzzling uses’ insofar as pas is not part of a negation. Instead, it is embedded under a negation in some higher clause. In section 5.3 we will see that such contexts are typical for so-called ‘strong NPIs’ (Zwarts 1986). The observation that pas in a positive sense is restricted to these contexts suggests that it was a ‘strong’ NPI in Old French, a hypothesis that will be taken up in more detail in section 5.4. The following three quotes show pas in yet a slightly diVerent kind of use: there is emphatic negation, but the emphasis is contributed by other expressions for objects that are in some respect minimal (a beam-tree berry, a holly berry, a single day). Pas is used like the particle even in English, auch nur in German (see Schwarz 2002), to signal the minimality of that other object. We will discuss in section 5.4 how these examples Wt into the general picture. (5.46) Ne not Qui who
pris le take the vaille worth-be
roi king pas ‘pas’
ne nor la the
sa grant seignorie his grand noblemen monte d’une alie berry of-a beam-tree
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‘I do not value the king nor his noblemen even as much as a beam-tree berry’s (sorbus torminalis) worth’ ([MGar., l. 99], TL vii. 410, 22) (5.47) Nous n’e¨umes ne ier ne wi Entre moi et ceste pucele, we not-had nor yesterday nor today between me and this girl Qui vausist pas une cenele De rien que on pe¨ust mengier which worth-be ‘pas’ a holly-berry of ‘rien’ that one could eat ‘Neither yesterday nor today had we anything, between me and this girl, of even a holly berry’s worth, that one could eat’. ([Atre per., l. 3038], TL vii. 410, 24) (5.48)
N’i a si fort qui contre amor Se pe¨uist pas tenser not-there has so strong who against love himself could ‘pas’ keep un jor one day ‘Nobody is so strong as to be able to resist love for even one day’. ([BCond., 276, 234], TL vii. 410, 27)
A Wnal type of ‘puzzling use’ of pas that is frequently mentioned in the literature turned out to be extremely hard to verify in actual source texts: positive uses of pas in rhetorical yes/no-questions. There is a long-standing debate among French philologists whether the loss of ne is an instance of language decay or, on the contrary, language use of high literary register. In the course of this debate, it was found that ne-less negation by simple pas and point shows up earliest in yes/no questions (Ashby 1991, as well as Bieringer 1910, Schulze 1888, Schweickha¨user 1852). The authors propose that yes/no questions leave it open whether point expresses negation or has a positive sense. For instance, example (5.49) is translated by Price (Price 1993) by Do you know him at all? but clearly, Don’t you know him? might be equally appropriate in many contexts of use. (5.49) Quenois le tu point? know him you ‘point’ ‘Do you know him at all?’ (Renart, CFMA l. 4223, SATF l. 4353) The crucial observation reported in the literature (Price 1993, Ashby 1991) is that bare pas negation likewise Wrst occurs in questions. Yet a putative preceding stage where pas would occur in a positive sense in a question can hardly be traced in the data. The only correct example that I could Wnd is the following
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(5.50) suis je pas bele dame e gente, Digne de servir un preudome? am I ‘pas’ beautiful dame and gentle worthy to serve a gentleman (Roman de la Rose, CFMA l. 5768, SATF l. 5798) translated by both Price (1993) and Schweickha¨user (1852) as a positive rhetorical question: ‘Am I a beautiful and gentle Lady perhaps, worth serving a Gentleman?’ Price (1993) oVers three further examples of pas in questions in a positive sense. They are, however, of dubious nature upon closer scrutiny; here is one of them: (5.51) vez, par le cors sainte Marie, Sil daigne pas parler ancor if-he deigns ‘pas’ talk still (Renart, CFMA ll. 12636–7) Price translates ‘. . . if he still deigns to speak at all’ which is, however, implausible. In the passage, Renard the Fox addresses the silent cat Tibert, asking him from time to time whether he was still not willing to talk: (Comment? ne me daignez respondre, ce dit Renart ‘How? You do not deign to answer, this says Renart’). It is practically certain that the quoted passage follows that pattern ‘does he still not deign to speak’ rather than Price’s freer ‘if he deigns to speak at all’. One last example for positive pas in a rhetorical question is quoted from Montaigne in Schweickha¨user (1852). While the positive use of pas is beyond doubt here, the passage is isolated and presumably an archaism by Montaigne. The story is about King Montezuma who is bound to the stake with his fellow: (5.52) Le roy, plantant We`rement et rigoreusement les yieulx sur luy, pour reproche de sa laschete´ et pusillanimite´, lui dict seulement ces mots, d’ une voix rude et ferme: Et moy, suis-je dans un baing? (The king, placing his eyes grimly and fast on him, and, accusing him for his weakness and fearfulness, just said these words, brutally and Wrmly: And me, am I in a bath?) suis-je pas plus a` mon ayse que toi? am-I ‘pas’ more at my ease than you ‘. . . Am I any more comfortable than you?’ (Montaigne, III. 6, des Cloches, from Schweickha¨user 1852: 91 f.) Did positive pas ever occur in questions in considerable frequency? A more exhaustive search in the available sources might reveal more instances, but at present, we must conclude that the harvest is meagre. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that pas as a simple negation occurred Wrst in rhetorical questions. Findings by earlier French linguists were conWrmed by my own search in the
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Table 4
embedded under negation, under negative verbs under sans (without) in rhetorical questions in questions in indirect questions antecedent of a conditional comparatives various other ‘downward-entailing’ contexts
mie
goutte
point
rien
personne
pas
mie
goutte
point
rien
personne
pas
goutte
point point point point point point point
rien rien rien rien rien
personne personne personne personne personne personne personne
mie mie mie mie mie
goutte
goutte
rien
pas
database Frantext in texts between 1500 and 1800. We get a total of sixteen neless negations by pas. Ten of these, all between 1500 and 1673, are in rhetorical questions. Only in 1660 do we Wnd the Wrst ne-less negation with pas in an assertion, a second in 1741, followed by four cases after 1770. The Wndings in the source texts presented so far can be summarized as follows. Drawing on Tobler-Lommatzsch, Catalani (2001), the Old French part of Bibliotheca Augustana, and secondary literature on Old French, we Wnd a variety of contexts in which negation particles mie, goutte, point, rien, personne, and pas were used in a positive sense (Table 4). We see that the particles mie, goutte, point, rien, and personne all occur with a certain reliability in the same kinds of contexts. (I will comment on the blank cells in the table presently.) The items diVer, however, with respect to the time and frequency in which they show ‘puzzling’ behaviour. While mie and goutte cease to occur in ‘puzzling uses’ in Middle French, mie being given up altogether, the other three can even today be used in a positive sense in the crucial kind of contexts. The particle pas shows a diVerent distribution. When used as a part of negation (ne pas), it does not seem to carry any particular emphasis even in the earliest documents.6 Emphasis is present in ‘puzzling uses’, but these are of a very restricted type: all occur in clauses that are embedded under a negation in a higher clause, plus perhaps—diVerent scholars have diVering intuitions here—also in rhetorical questions. Let us come back to Jespersen’s straight pathway to negation. We have now seen a considerable number of uses of the respective particles which do not lie 6 I am aware that this statement, being based on stylistic intuition, is very easy to attack. While nothing in the following hinges on it, I still think that it reXects a tendency in the data, and that it may be taken as evidence that pas was not only special in other respects, but also the earliest noun that entered into grammaticalization.
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From Step to Negation
anywhere on the straight Jespersen cline. They are aberrations. The items in question are neither used in their literal old sense, nor as part of negation (emphatic or otherwise). Should we be worried about these aberrations? Can we explain them? A Wrst possible reaction to these aberrations might be a statistical explanation. One could point out that language variation and change is after all a sociological process where a certain amount of variation is to be expected. Speakers at that time did not use pas, mie, or rien with a clear idea of turning them into part of a complex negation. Only in retrospect, and from a distance, can we see the major tendencies in the data. Jespersen’s pathway might simply be the straight line drawn though a somewhat speckled array of real data. A second tentative explanation could rest on semantic terms. One might claim that the change from being a word that denotes ‘step’, ‘drop’, ‘crumb’, etc. to becoming part of an emphatic negation involves a simultaneous weakening of the semantic feature Step, Drop, Crumb, etc. and a strengthening of a semantic feature Negativity. Where the weakening and strengthening is not well balanced, we Wnd ‘puzzling uses’ (with too little literal content and too little craving for a liaison with negation). In this connection, it will be consoling to remember that the ‘puzzling uses’ have been characterized as ‘being somehow in negative contexts after all’ (Grevisse 1994: § 981 as well as the authors of Tobler-Lommatzsch, for instance in the entry ‘mie’). Still, the sceptic would object that it was unclear in what sense the antecedent of a conditional, or the restrictor of a universal quantiWcation, should be ‘negative’. A third kind of reaction might be that the puzzling uses do not look so puzzling after all. In some sense, the examples above look perfectly reasonable: Anybody in command of an expression that means ‘(not) a bit/in the least/in any way’ would also use it in questions, in if-clauses, and all these other contexts, wouldn’t they? Is there anything we need to explain? Yes, there is, insofar as these very sound intuitions are nowhere reXected in the Jespersen pathway. A new account of the development, one that endorsed these intuitions, would certainly be preferable. The observation that the ‘puzzling data’ are intuitively quite unpuzzling also makes it plain that there must be something fundamentally wrong with the statistical answer. These uses look like an inherent part of the Jespersen cline rather than a corona of junk data. Scholars’ intuitions about ‘puzzling uses’ of pas, rien, personne, goutte, mie, and point have always been that they do not occur just anywhere, but are restricted to certain contexts. As the examples above have shown, the common characterization of these contexts as being ‘negative in some sense’ is not really suitable. Is there any other criterion that could tie together the
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somewhat arbitrary choice of contexts? In fact, there is. The attested examples strongly suggest the hypothesis that we are dealing with exactly the class of contexts that licenses so-called negative polarity items (NPIs). One of the most prominent examples is the English opposition between some and any, where any, the negative polarity item, replaces some in certain contexts. The data seem to indicate that Jespersen’s pathway leads through a stage where the word-in-question turns into a negative polarity item. The hypothesis is supported by the observation that some examples of emphatic negation with pas, mie, etc. have direct counterparts in modern languages that rest on the use of a negative polarity item. Sentence (5.53) shows such a use of ne-goutte. (5.53) La vostre tra¨ison ne vaut goute d’argent the your treachery not worth-is ‘goutte’ of-money ‘your treachery is not worth a red cent’ ([Gaufr., l. 281.], TL iv. 464, 39) As a Wrst step, we should hence replace the middle station on Jespersen’s cline, ‘emphatic negation’, by another label, ‘polarity sensitive use’. This does not, however, spare us a fuller understanding of the essential link between emphatic negation and polarity sensitivity. This is what I will do in the remainder of this chapter. In the next section, I will introduce the pragmatic theory of negative polarity items. I will demonstrate how the eVect of ‘emphatic negation’ comes about in a compositional fashion. And in section 5.4 we will Wnally apply the general theory to the case at hand: the development of French complex negation patterns.
5.3 Polarity Sensitive Items and Emphatic Negation 5.3.1. Negative polarity sensitivity Negative polarity items are words, phrases, or expressions that are acceptable in ‘negative’ contexts but unacceptable in ‘positive’ contexts. English ever or at all are among the best-known and most-studied examples. The sentences in (5.54) illustrate the eVect: (5.54) a. No student ever read the paper. b. Few students have ever read the paper. c. *Tom has ever read the paper. d. *Many students have ever read the paper. e. Has Tom ever written anything sensible about this problem? f. If Tom has ever written anything sensible about this problem, he will get the job.
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Examples (5.54b, e, f ) show that an NPI like ever is not simply licensed by the presence of an overt negation. The challenge in investigating negative polarity items lies in characterizing the kind of contexts that license them. A simple, well-known, and fairly precise criterion was proposed by Ladusaw (1979). He suggests that NPIs can occur in contexts which are downward monotone: (5.55) A context is a sentence where something is missing: X_Y. A context is called downward monotone, if for suitable items A which Wt into the context the following holds true: If XAY is true, and ½½A0 ½½A, then XA’Y is also true. The criterion can be tested with our sample sentences above. (5.56) shows the test for temporal PPs under the scope of negation. (5.56) Context: No student read the paper___. ½½ on last Sunday ½½ last week (times on last week’s Sunday are part of times in last week) The test: No student read the paper last week ! No student read the paper on last Sunday The diagnosis: Context is downward entailing, should license NPIs conWrmed by (5.54a) Similar tests apply to other contexts like the antecedent of conditionals, restrictors of universal quantiWcation, the scope of few and rarely, and so on. Testing contexts for downward monotonicity, we correctly predict that the following contexts, among others, license NPIs: (5.57)
. . . . . . .
certain positions in comparative constructions antecedents of conditionals positions under ‘without that’ restrictors of universal quantiWers positions under verbs of doubting positions in embedded clauses under negation direct and indirect questions (with appropriate adjustments of the criterion to the speech act of questioning)
The following examples oVer illustration, and further examples can easily be thought of: (5.58) Lola runs faster than Tom ever did. Lola took the money without anyone noticing.
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Every student who has ever attended Prof. PWVel’s lectures knows what ‘to suVer’ means. I wonder whether you have ever done any chemistry at all. Did you bring any salad? The elegance of this kind of approach lies in the fact that one abstract semantic criterion can tie together lists of contexts that otherwise seem to have little in common, apart from the fact that scholars are more or less willing to sense a Xavour of negativity or dubitativity in all or most of them. The criterion in (5.55) can also be applied to any new context. Instead of listing context after context, new examples can simply be captured by the old criterion.7 SpeciWcally, we can now go back to the contexts of puzzling uses of goutte, rien, mie, personne, and point listed in section 5.2. It turns out that all listed contexts are in fact downward entailing. Moreover, against this background the gaps in Table 4 are less disquieting. We only have sparse texts, and cannot expect that all possible constellations are witnessed therein. It would be unrealistic to Wnd an example for each possible downward-entailing context, for all of the items under scrutiny—after all, we have a characterizing criterion that applies to an inWnity of diVerent sentences. Note as an aside that we do have an indirectly negative example, i.e. a nonuse of puzzling pas: Perle (1876) oVers (5.59) as one allegedly positive use of pas. Suspiciously, this instance of ne-free pas occurs in a context that is not downward entailing. We would hence expect that this context should not license a ‘puzzling’ use of pas. (5.59) Li chevalier aussi n’avoient chascun vaine, De la grande paour, qui fust pas granment saine, . . . (Brun de la Montagne l. 1556 (Perle 1878: 410) ) An attempt to translate this example conWrms the suspicions against Perle’s claim: The story is about knights kidnapping a baby who now cries out from hunger and needs the breast. ‘The knights also did not have any relief for the great mishap that was <pas> very healthy’. If we assume, following Perle, that we face a positive use of pas here, its meaning should be ‘in the least’ or ‘in any way’ like in all other ‘puzzling uses’. However, it makes little sense to assert 7 Let me just add by way of a footnote that, of course, the issue of negative polarity sensitivity is not settled since Ladusaw (1979). Apart from the competition between syntax based approaches and semantics based approaches to NPI-hood, further questions like the interaction between presupposition and NPI licensing, the diVerentiation of various types of NPI-hood, the classiWcation of ‘free choice’ items like any, as well as nature and content of reference scales, are topics of current debate; see Hoeksema and Rullman (2001), Giannakidou (2001), Sæbø (2001), among others.
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that ‘the knights did not have any relief for the great mishap that was in the least/in any way very healthy’. It makes very good sense to translate pas as not. We get a reasonable statement that witnesses, moreover, a good sense of humour: The knights also did not have any relief for the great mishap that was not very healthy.
The theoretical expectation that pas should only occur in a positive sense in downward-entailing context is hence conWrmed by philological considerations. This shows the practical value of a sound semantic theory. The main body of research on negative polarity items was focused on the characterization of the contexts in which they occur, there being by now a wide agreement that the licensing process is semantic in nature (Ladusaw 1979, Zwarts 1986, 1998, Giannakidou 1999, 2001, among others). Yet, while the semantics of the construction around an NPI was subject to sophisticated investigation, the semantic and pragmatic properties of NPIs themselves have received less scrutiny. This gap in the theory becomes all the more visible in language change. The quoted accounts oVer no answer to the following questions: . .
.
Why should speakers decide to restrict the use of a word to contexts that are characterized by a peculiar semantic property like the one in (5.55)? Why is this restriction adopted only for expressions that denote minimal entities or measures (drop, crumb, step, point) or most general properties (thing, person)? Why does this restriction have the side eVect that the respective expressions (in Old French) can serve to make emphatic negations? (Remember that NPIs are not always licensed by negation.)
In recent years, the so-called pragmatic theories of polarity sensitivity have gained ground. They derive the distributional restrictions of NPIs from their literal meaning and their pragmatic-rhetorical quality. The core assumptions are that (a) emphatic assertions make scalar statements (Fauconnier 1975a, 1975b), and (b) negative polarity items somehow relate to logically weaker statements; by domain widening (Kadmon and Landmann 1993), or by exploiting general mechanisms of referring to alternative states of aVairs (Krifka 1995, Lahiri 1995). The latter proposal was adopted and further developed in the literature; speciWcally van Rooy (2003) managed to extend the proposal for the question case, a long-standing open issue in the debate. I will rest my discussion on Krifka (1995) in the simpliWed variant in Eckardt (2005a). Krifka proposes an analysis of negative and positive polar items in terms of two independent factors: emphatic focus, and the special pragmatic
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behaviour of NPIs. According to his account, negative polar items have a special rhetorical function. They occur in emphatic statements, and serve to evoke alternatives. The emphatic quality of the assertion explains the emotional undertone of NPI statements: among all alternative courses of events that might have taken place, this, the most unlikely, most curious, least salient alternative, is what actually happened. Let me demonstrate the spirit of the analysis with an example before entering into the implementation of this idea. Take a sentence like (5.60): (5.60) Tom did not talk to any living soul The analysis will assume that any living soul evokes more speciWc noun phrases as alternatives, e.g. friend, priest, psychologist, relative, . . . . Inserting them into the statement in (5.60) will yield alternative possible statements: Tom talked to no friend, he talked to no priest, he talked to no psychologist, . . . . An emphatic assertion will express that the statement made (¼ the sentence in (5.60) ) is the least probable/salient, most striking one among these alternatives: (5.61) Proposition expressed by the sentence: ‘Tom talked to nobody’ Pragmatically implied:8 . . . and among all things that one could have said here, like: Tom talked to no friend, Tom talked to no priest, Tom talked to no psychologist, Tom talked to no relative, . . . this is about the most striking thing one can say! The elegance of this treatment consists in the fact that it combines independent analyses of focus and emphasis—two semantic/pragmatic mechanisms that are well understood on independent grounds—with minimal additional assumptions about the pragmatic nature of NPIs to yield an explanation for the pragmatic eVects and restricted distribution of the latter. I will provide the necessary background in focus semantics in the following section. (This part of semantic/pragmatic theory will become useful once more in Chapter 6.) 5.3.2. Focus Current theories of focus rest on the shared intuition that focusing a part of a sentence comes along with highlighting what else could have been said in its stead, with evoking alternatives. The meaning of focus particles and other focus sensitive constructions are assumed to refer to these alternatives 8
Technically speaking, this will be treated as the presupposition.
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in the computation of the overall meaning of sentences. I will base my discussion on the format in Rooth (1985, 1992) because it is one of the most accessible treatments. Rooth (1985) proposes that all expressions E in natural language have a focus semantic value in addition to their ordinary semantic value. In Chapter 3, I introduced the notiation ½½ E for the denotation of expression E. This notation will now be reWned to distinguish between ordinary and focus driven interpretation: (5.62) ½½Eo the ordinary semantic value of E ½½Ef the focus semantic value of E What is the focus semantic value of an expression E ? As long as E is unfocused and does not contain any foci, not much will change. We simply interpret E as usual and take the set that consists of this ordinary denotation of E as its focus semantic value. If E is in focus, notated as Ef , things are more interesting: we collect all those possible denotations that are of the same logical type as E and that are salient alternatives of E in the given context. ‘Being of the same logical type’ reXects the intuition that a noun in focus can only evoke alternative properties, a transitive verb in focus can only evoke other binary relations between individuals, a quantiWer in focus can only evoke alternative quantiWers, etc. The following deWnitions sum up these assumptions: (5.63) Focus semantic evaluation of simple expressions E ½½Ef ¼ {½½Eo } for non-focused expression E ½½Ef ¼ {½½Eo ,F1,F2,F3, . . . } where F1,F2, . . . are salient possible alternatives of the same logical type as ½½Eo (I will also sometimes use Alt(E) to refer to these alternatives.9 ) The focus semantic value of complex expressions AB which are not focused as a whole is computed by taking each element in ½½Af and combining it with each element in ½½Bf in the appropriate manner (usually, this will be functional application). The result is collected in the set ½½ABf : (5.64) Focus semantic evaluation of complex expressions AB ½½ABf ¼ { Ai 1Bj jAi 2 ½½Af , Bj 2 ½½Bf , 1 suitable mode of semantic combination}
9
The abbreviation ‘alternatives of E’ frequently reads more smoothly than ½½(E)f f .
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Let me illustrate the theory with the example in (5.65). The focused word here is Peter. In concord with current literature, I assume that an abstract focus feature f is expressed by an appropriate prosodic pattern (which, in languages like English, German, French, comes down to an accent in the correct place). (5.65) Peterf knows Lady Di. The ordinary semantic values of the words in (5.65) are the individual concepts ‘Peter’, ‘Lady Di’, and the property of knowing someone: (5.66) ½½Petero ¼ Peter ½½LadyDio ¼ Lady Di ½½knowso ¼ lylx. know (x,y) Let us assume that (5.65) is uttered in a context where we are concerned with Peter and his friends, Paul, Maria, and Anne. In such a context, we would understand (5.67) ½½Peterf f ¼ {Peter, Paul, Maria, Anne} The unfocused words do not evoke any alternatives. (5.68) ½½Lady Dif ¼ {Lady Di} ½½knowsf ¼ {lylx.know (x,y)} Combining object noun phrase and verb, we will get the property ‘to know Lady Di’ as the ordinary semantic value. Given that no focusing takes place in the verb phrase, the focus semantic value will consist of the singleton set containing just this property. (5.69) ½½knows Lady Dio ¼ lylx. know (x,y)(Lady Di) ¼ lx.know (x, Lady Di) ½½knows Lady Dif ¼ {lx.know (x, Lady Di) } The entire sentence denotes the proposition ‘Peter knows Lady Di’. Given that the subject NP Peter is in focus, we can compute the focus semantic value of the sentence as in (5.70): (5.70) ½½Peter knows Lady Dio ¼ lx.know(x, Lady Di) (Peter) ¼ know (Peter, Lady Di) ½½Peterf knows Lady Dif ¼ { lx.know(x, Lady Di)(X) j X 2 Alt( Peter )} ¼ {lx.know(x, Lady Di)(Peter), lx.know(x, Lady Di)(Paul), lx.know(x, Lady Di)(Maria), lx.know(x, Lady Di)(Anne)}
154
From Step to Negation ¼ {know (Peter, Lady Di), know(Paul, Lady Di), know(Maria, Lady Di), know(Anne, Lady Di)}
Focus particles and other focus sensitive constructions operate on such sets of alternative propositions. If we add only into sentence (5.65), for example, only will assert that no alternative except the original sentence holds true. If we add too, or as well, we will turn the set of focus alternatives into the assertion that each of them holds true. If we add even into the sentence, this will turn the focus alternatives into the assertion that (a) all of them hold true and that (b) the alternative expressed by the original sentence is the least likely, or most surprising one among the alternatives to hold true. (5.71) Even Peterf knows Lady Di. asserts: know (Peter, Lady Di) presupposes: (i) all alternative propositions hold true, as well: know(Paul, Lady Di), know (Maria, Lady Di), know(Anne, Lady Di) (ii) The truth of the asserted proposition is more surprising, more striking, less likely, than the truth of any other of the alternatives The case of even is of particular interest for us because Krifka (1995) proposes a similar semantic-pragmatic contribution of emphatic focus.10 Emphatic assertions are understood as if they contained a tacit even. This idea is spelled out in (5.72). In this deWnition, p stands for the probability, or salience, or strikingness of a given proposition in the particular situation. (5.72) emph.assert(S) asserts: ½½So presupposes: In the given context, p(½½So ) < p(X) for all X 2 ½½Sf ‘½½So is more surprising than any of its alternatives’ Emphatic focusing will leave it open whether we understand that all other alternatives hold true as well—as might perhaps be the most natural assumption for a sentence like ‘Peter knows Lady Di!’—or whether these alternatives are false. Example (5.73) is such a case:
10 The deWnition in (3.10) diVers slightly from Krifka (1995) who requires that ½S be less probable than the conjunction of all other alternatives. This stronger requirement is used in Krifka’s treatment of strong NPIs but is dispensable in the variant of the approach that I will propose here.
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(5.73) Peter stole the coconut! Let me brieXy comment on the nature of the scales that are involved in emphatic statements. While the rankings of salience, strikingness, or surprise are commonly (and conveniently) notated like probabilities, there is a consensus among researchers that probability theory can at best oVer a schematic frame for the actual notions that play a role here. Certainly, in an example of emphatic focusing like (5.74) we do not allude to the statistical probability of the proposition ‘the pope will have to die one day’ (which is 1, as for any alternative). (5.74) (Even) The pope will have to die one day. We do allude to a scale here, but not a statistical one. It is a scale of ‘what is appropriate’ or a scale derived from a ranking of privileges of various persons in the plans of God. I adopt the oYcial notation here and will not delve into the spectrum of possible contents it can carry. Instead, we can now turn to the semantics and pragmatics of negative polar items. 5.3.3. A theory of negative polarity items Let us return to our agenda and approach an explanation of the process in which certain nouns (a) are generalized beyond their original lexical content, (b) can be used to express emphatic negation (the middle station on Jespersen’s pathway), and (c) at the same time—or as part of the same process?—turn into negative polarity items. It will turn out that the pragmatic theory of polarity sensitivity can answer these questions. I will make two assumptions: NPIs always evoke alternatives, and NPIs carry the lexical information that they must always be used in emphatic statements (i.e. statements that are evaluated by the hearer along the deWnition in (5. 72) ). Let me illustrate this process with expressions like anybody, ever, or red cent. Denotations and sample alternatives are shown in (5.75), (5.76): (5.75) ½½anybodyo ¼ lP 9x( Body(x) ^ P(x) ) ½½anybodyf ¼ { ½½some butcher, ½½some priest, ½½some farmer, . . . } ¼ { lP 9x( Butcher(x) ^ P(x) ), lP 9x( Priest(x) ^ P(x) ), lP9x( Farmer(x) ^ P(x) )} (5.76) ½½red cento ¼ lP9x( RedCent(x) ^ P(x) ) ½½red centf ¼ { lP9x( RedCent(x) ^ P(x) ), lP9x( 1$(x) ^ P(x) ), lP9x( 10$(x) ^ P(x) ) }
156
From Step to Negation ½½evero ¼ lP9t9e( Time(t) ^ t(e) ¼ t ^ P(e) ) ½½everf ¼ { ½½in spring, ½½in summer, ½½in winter, . . . } ¼ { lP 9t9e( Spring(t) ^ t(e) ¼ t ^ P(e) ), lP 9t9e( Summer(t) ^ t(e) ¼ t ^ P(e) ), lP 9t9e( Winter(t) ^ t(e) ¼ t ^ P(e) ), . . . }
A sentence that contains an NPI (e.g. ‘anybody’) requires an evaluation as an emphatic assertion. The resulting pragmatic message does not always make sense. If it does, the NPI is licensed. If it does not, the sentence is marked. Let me Wrst demonstrate what will happen in a marked case like (5.77). (5.77) ½½Susan met anybodyf ¼ {½½Susan met a butchero , ½½Susan met a priesto , ½½Susan met a farmero , . . . } In (5.77), the proposition ‘Susan met anybody(¼ somebody)’ is implied by all its alternatives. In other words, whenever ‘Susan met an NN’ for some speciWc NN among the alternatives is true, then ‘Susan met anybody(somebody)’ is also true. Hence, the sentence denotes the most probable, least striking case among the given alternatives. The speaker of (5.77) has, however, chosen to use the rhetorically marked NPI expression anybody. She is hence committed to the pragmatic message of emphasis. In particular, the speaker signals that she has conWrmed the most striking fact in the range of alternatives. It is, however, intrinsically impossible to convey this message with the given sentence. In brief, the sentence is bad because emphasis and the logical structure of its alternatives contradict each other. (5.78) Logic: Susan met anybody (¼ somebody) is the least striking alternative Pragmatic side message, evoked by emphasis: Susan met anybody (¼somebody) is most striking alternative M Let me now go through an allowed use of a NPI in order to see the interaction between downward-entailing operators, alternatives, and the logic of emphasis: (5.79) ½½Susan rarely met anybodyf ¼ {½½Susan rarely met a butchero , ½½Susan rarely met a priesto , ½½Susan rarely met a farmero , . . . } In (5.79), the proposition expressed by the sentence is the logically strongest among the alternatives. In terms of an event space, there will be a lot of possibilities where ‘Susan rarely met a NN’ (NN ¼ farmer, butcher, priest, . . . ) holds true and yet ‘Susan rarely met anyone’ is not the case.
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Hence, the latter is the most striking one in the logical space of alternatives. This is in concord with the contribution of emphasis: (5.80) Logic: Susan rarely met anybody (¼somebody) is the most striking alternative Emphasis: Susan rarely met anybody (¼somebody) is the most striking alternative Let me recapitulate the essentials of the pragmatic theory of polarity sensitivity. It is assumed that NPIs are lexically marked for a speciWc rhetorical function. They always have the potential to evoke alternatives, and they are always part of an emphatic assertion. Emphasis leads to the presupposition that the sentence denotes the most striking among the salient alternatives. This can only be true if the polarity item stands in the ‘right place’, more speciWcally, in a downward-entailing context. In all other contexts, the salient alternatives will always be more striking than the sentence denotation, which contradicts the desired presupposition. This mechanism works equally well for polarity items that denote most general properties (any, ever, OF personne, rien; alternatives are more speciWc properties of the right kind) as for polarity items that denote very small entities (a bit, a drop, OF mie, goutte; alternatives are larger quantities). The theory as I have described it so far will account for the restriction of polarity items to downward-monotone contexts. Remember, however, that the data survey in section 5.2 showed that pas was even more severely restricted in its contexts of (positive) uses. Once again, this phenomenon is well known in the research on polarity sensitive items, and the items that show this particular fastidiousness are termed ‘strong NPIs’. In the next section, I will address this class of NPIs and sketch how the present theory can be extended so as to cover their behaviour. 5.3.4. A theory of negative polarity items: refinements At the outset of section 5.3 we observed that not only negations, but also quantiWers like rarely and few, create downward-monotone contexts. However, not all NPIs are acceptable under these operators. This is illustrated by the minimal pair in (5.82)/(5.83): (5.82) a. Few students showed even a spark of interest. b. No student showed even a spark of interest. (5.83) a. No student drank even a drop of wine. b. *Few students drank even a drop of wine.
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Expressions like a drop (in emphatic focus), lift a Wnger, care a damn, own a red cent are acceptable in the scope of negation, but sound odd in contexts like in (5.83) which license NPIs like any, ever, or spark of interest. Zwarts (1986) Wrst drew attention to the diVerent classes of NPIs and coined the term ‘strong negative polarity item’ for those which conform in behaviour with lift a Wnger, any N whatsoever, bat an eyelash in English. Following my earlier proposal in Eckardt (2005a, 2005b), I suggest that minimal degrees and measures like drink a drop or lift a Wnger give rise to scalar inferences that make them unsuited for positive assertions, i.e. assertions where the occurrence of such a thing as the lifting of a Wnger would be positively asserted.11 The underlying intuition is this: speakers know that in the context of drinking, an event of drinking a drop can never occur on its own—even though a lot of drops usually will be consumed after a drinking of some larger quantity. Similarly, speakers know that in the context of helping, an event of lifting one’s Wnger can never occur on its own—even though a lot of Wnger-lifting usually will have taken place after an event of helping. A sentence like (5.83b), I propose, sounds strange because it gives rise to the scalar implicature that some student actually did the impossible: drink a drop of wine but nothing more. Sentences with negation (non-veridical contexts, in terms of Giannakidou 1998) however are safe, because they just deny the existence of any drop-drinking event. This describes an unproblematic state of aVairs. According to this view, strong NPIs are just like other NPIs with some extra reasons to restrict their distribution further. The table in (5.84) recapitulates that the Wrst restriction of the NPI a single drop to downward-monotone contexts works like in the basic case in section 5.3.3. (5.84) Anna did not drink [a single drop]f Alternative propositions: {‘Anna did not drink a glassful of anything’, ‘Anna did not drink a bottleful of anything’, ‘Anna did not drink a barrelful of anything’, . . . } Implications: The asserted proposition implies all others. Whatever event Wts one of the latter descriptions will also make the proposition true. ) The asserted proposition is the least likely one among the alternatives. Emphasis: The asserted proposition is the least likely one among the alternatives. 11
The spirit of this explanation is shared by Giannakidou’s criterion of non-veridicality. Yet, while Giannakidou simply postulates that some kinds of expressions may only be used in clauses S such that the overall assertion implies :½S, I attempt to oVer a contentful explanation of this strange behaviour.
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Expressions of minimal quantity in emphatic emphasis, particularly in an early transparent stage, tend to occur in the more restricted contexts of strong NPIs. Typologically, strong NPIs frequently derive from minimal entities or from other phrases that denote minimal reaction, minimal activity, etc. It is important to keep in mind, however, that there is no strict dichotomy between small-entity-NPIs and other NPIs that would exactly match the weak–strong distinction. Languages can shift the boundaries in both directions. There can be etymologically small-entity NPIs that nevertheless behave like weak polarity items, and languages often possess means to turn arbitrary polarity items into strong NPIs (e.g. Dutch ook maar, see Hoeksema and Rullmann 2001). We Wnd that it is more a matter of conceptualization than a matter of brute fact whether speakers are willing to imagine events of drinking one drop, events of batting an eyelash, events of lifting a Wnger, and so on. Likewise, hearers seem to be willing to a certain degree to repair the oddness of examples like (5.83b): they can grant the speaker that he seems to be able to imagine such an event, even though the hearer himself might not. This could explain why speakers tend to qualify sentences like (5.83) as ‘odd’ rather than ‘ungrammatical’. Eckardt (2005a) spends more discussion on the speciWc predictions of the present approach, as well as points of divergence from other theories. Before turning back to negation in Old French, I would like to provide some theoretical counterpart to the philological discussion that was summarized at the end of section 5.2. French linguists were concerned about the loss of ne in complex negation. In particular they wanted to Wnd out whether this was an instance of (forbiddable) language decay or an instance of language use of a high register. Foreshadowing the discussion in the next section, we can already speculate that for some period, ne-less uses of negation particles in a positive sense were indicative of a conservative use of language, used by persons who were aquainted, from historical texts, with the NPI stages of negation particles. We can moreover speculate that such ne-less uses of personne, point, mie, pas, etc. were imitated by others. We can Wnally speculate that such imitation aimed to mimic the right context restrictions. Without any active understanding of the NPI character of the negation particle, however, these attempts must amount to mere pattern matching. It seems plausible that the use in questions could be one type of ne-less point, personne, pas, mie, . . . that was easy to imitate, even though mistakenly. While traditional language use would have understood such particles in questions in a positive sense in any way, to any degree, anyhow, etc., the imitation used them as negations: not. If this story is right, it could explain why ne-less negation is found earliest in questions, and why
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it is at the same time an imitation of prestige language and a Wrst step in language change. Krifka (1995: 251 V.) already oVers the main outlines of how to extend the pragmatic theory of polarity sensitivity to NPI licensing in questions. He proposes that polarity items in questions will evoke alternative questions. (5.85) oVers an example. (5.85) Did you see anybody? Did you see a priest? Did you see a farmer? Did you see a butcher? . . . By using the least speciWc question in (5.85), the speaker signals that he intends to increase the chance of getting a positive answer. He would do so if there were an expectation that all more speciWc questions would get the answer ‘no’ with high probability. Van Rooy (2003) oVered a formal account of this intuitive description of the rhetoric quality of NPIs in questions. Most importantly, van Rooy proposes a close link between such questions and a general relevance based theory of questioning and information retrieval. He explains the use of NPIs in questions as a strategy to optimize one’s question in a context where the speaker expects negative answers to the more speciWc alternative questions with high probability. In that sense, NPIs in questions not only ensure optimal information retrieval but also signal certain biases of the speaker. If the speaker decides to use a strong NPI in a question, he signals the following epistemic background: ‘I expect that all weaker questions would receive a negative answer. I know that the question that I literally ask cannot receive a positive answer either—under such circumstances.’ The net eVect will be a bias of the speaker to the probability that the question will receive a negative answer. In other words: strong NPIs in questions always lead to rhetorical questions. This was Wrst observed by Borkin (1971), and is illustrated below. (5.86) Did Joe Doe even lift a Wnger to help me? Did he even drink a drop of wine? Once more, these Wndings tie in surprisingly well with the philological Wndings about pas. Anticipating the discussion in the next section, the data in section 5.2 lend strong support to the following hypothesis: pas was a strong negative polarity item that was closely tied to negation, but also licensed in rhetorical questions. From its close tie to negation, it became the standard negation particle; from its NPI use in rhetorical questions it developed the Wrst ne-less uses as negation in rhetorical questions. The patterns in the data do not exhibit the whims of earlier speaker generations but witness organic
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language stages. We are now at the point where we can bring together theory and data in more detail.
5.4 Step to Negation The large picture that I will propose for the development of negation particles in French is this: in Old French, we Wnd certain nouns in the lexicon which, at the outset, carried no special pragmatic value whatsoever. These nouns conveyed literal meanings like ‘step’, ‘crumb’, ‘drop’, ‘thing’, and so on. In addition, speakers possessed general pragmatic strategies that are part of the universal tool kit of human communication: the semantics and pragmatics of focusing scalar inferencing, the pragmatics of scalar presuppositions, and emphatic asserting. Transparent emphatic constructions must have been the starting point of the development from step to negation. In particular, we can assume that the nouns mie (‘crumb’), pas (‘step’), point (‘point’), and goutte (‘drop’) could in principle enter in transparent emphatic focus constructions in exactly the same way as modern counterparts like French un sou, English a red cent can do. In combination with appropriate verbs (like ‘eat’, ‘drink’, . . . ), they could hence allude to alternative larger aVected objects (‘eat a slice of bread’, ‘eat a full meal’) and give rise to alternative propositions ordered on a scale, in exactly the manner described in the previous section. These fully transparent constructions were allowed in contexts where the content and direction of this scale was in concord with the contribution of emphatic focusing. In the previous section we characterized such contexts as ‘downward entailing’ and downward entailing non-assertive respectively. We do not know which verbs were most commonly used in transparent emphatic uses of minimal entity nouns like point, goutte, etc. While some guesses are obvious (e.g. manger for mie, aller or marcher for pas), some of these obvious guesses might yet be wrong: for instance the sortal restrictions on goutte suggest that ‘a drop’ was more likely a conventionally very slight sound (¼ object of perception) rather than a very small object of consumption (as e.g. in English). Still, the fact that small quantity nouns can potentially enter into emphatic constructions of the crucial kind is a universal which does not depend on the peculiarities of a culture or community. What about nouns that denote most general properties? The nouns personne and rien could also enter into emphatic focus constructions. Yet, note that focus alternatives regularly are disjoint rather than overlapping (Rooth 1985). The eVect can be demonstrated particularly clearly for personne (in the
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sense of ‘person’, ‘personality’, ‘human’, attested at least since 1140, see Robert historique): focusing the noun personne (or Modern French: une personne) will evoke disjoint alternatives like a thing, a plant, an animal, etc. The following emphatic focus in Modern French would yield alternatives of the kind in (5.87). No logical implications hold between sentence and alternatives. Any scalar ordering of the alternatives must hence be contingent. (5.87) Robinson Crusoe in his diary: Aujourd’hui, j’ai vu une personnef ! (‘today, I saw some person!’) Alt(S) ¼ { Robinson has seen an animal, Robinson has seen a plant, Robinson has seen a stone, . . . } At this stage, emphatic focus on personne under negation will express emphatic denial only under certain contingent circumstances (the proposition by accident happens to be the most striking one), not by the logic of the sentence (the proposition is the most striking one due to the logical ordering between alternatives and utterance). We see that they could not enter into emphatic denial constructions unless they underwent a Wrst change—see below. The next step for mie, goutte, pas, and point must have been that their potential to single out minimal (or subminimal) events, and the eVects that arise under emphatic focus, were taken as the basis of a use in a new sense. Their new semantic contribution was that of an adverbial modiWer ‘to the least degree’, ‘in a minimal degree’. Their focus alternatives remained ‘to larger degrees’ with the additional ontological assumption that ‘doing x to some degree’ implies ‘doing x to a minimal degree’. I take mie as an illustration. (5.88) 1. ½½ mie ¼ Mie, a function that maps event descriptions onto event descriptions. For P a predicate of events, Mie(P) comprises all smallest events in P. 2. Focus alternatives of mie: Alt(Mie) ¼ { A j A is a contextually salient other degree adverb } ¼ {½½ a little bit, ½½ somewhat , ½½ pretty much , ½½ very much } 3. Pragmatic function of mie: mie must be used in emphatic focus The resulting word will be a negative polarity item because the contribution of emphatic focusing will only make sense in downward-entailing contexts. It will, in particular, be of use to make emphatic negative statements because positions in the scope of a negation are in most cases downward entailing.12 12 The characterization of licensing contexts as ‘downward entailing’ spares us the need to consider the intricacies of double, triple, and quadruple negation as well as issues of negative concord.
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Emphatic negation arises as the product of two factors. First, the sentence denies a proposition p. Secondly, it presupposes that the fact that non-p is the most striking thing among the salient alternatives (non-p1, non-p2, . . . ). The same pattern Wts the data for point and goutte in their adverbial uses. In order to capture the more restricted use of pas, I propose the following. (5.89) ½½ pas ¼ Pas, a function that maps event descriptions onto event descriptions. For P a predicate of events, Pas(P) comprises the subminimal subevents of P. Subminimal subevents of P are related to P events in the following ways: Wherever some P-event takes place, it has some Pas(P) events as parts. Pas(P) events are not P-events and they do not have any P events as parts: (5.90) (i) 8e(P(e) !9e’(Pas(P)(e’) ^ e’<e) ) (ii) 8e’ (Pas(P)(e’) !9e( e’<e ^ P(e) ) ) (iii) 8e’ (Pas(P)(e’) !:9 e( e<e’ ^ P(e) ) ) In other words: all P events have Pas(P) events as parts, but these are too small to count as P events. This explains why pas shows the distribution of a strong NPI: it was restricted to non-veridical contexts by virtue of the scalar inferences described in section 5.3.4. The argument rests on the intuition that it is pragmatically odd to assert that somebody does P to a subminimal extent.13 Let me brieXy recapitulate the evidence which motivated this special analysis for pas. One main result is that ‘puzzling’ uses of pas can only be found in non-assertive contexts. Let me oVer a test for this diagnosis. Below, I list translations of two earlier examples into English. I then insert a strong negative polarity item of the any whatsoever kind (see Krifka 1995). The examples repeat the original, then offer the test sentence, with the crucial items in boldface. (5.44) original: ‘There is nobody, neither old nor young, who had even in the least forgotten the great harm they had got from their Master.’ (5.44’) test: ‘There is nobody, neither old nor young, who had forgotten any aspect whatsoever of the great harm they had got from their Master.’ (5.43) original: ‘Because there is no king under the sky who is so powerful that he could even in the least change heart or mind of any man against his will.’ 13 The approach, as well as its model theoretic underpinnings, is presented independently in Eckardt (2005a, 2005b).
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(5.45) test: ‘Because there is no king under the sky who is so powerful that he could in any respect whatsoever change heart or mind of any man against his will.’ Note that we are in the privileged, and perhaps surprising, case where data from contemporary English can oVer evidence for Old French. What we are testing are the semantic properties of given contexts. Semantic properties (like non-veridicality, downward entailing, etc.) are retained under translation. Hence, a sentence in Old French should license a strong polarity item iV its translation in modern English does. Stray uses of pas where it functions like a particle that signals the use of a strong NPI support this analysis. Let me repeat (5.47): (5.47) Nous n’e¨umes ne ier ne wi Entre moi et ceste pucele, Qui vausist pas une cenele De rien que on pe¨ust mengier ‘Neither yesterday nor today had we anything, between me and this girl, of even a holly berry’s worth, that one could eat.’ ([Atre per., l. 3038], TL vii. 410, 24) We may suspect that pas is used here in the sense of Dutch ook maar (Hoeksema and Rullman 2001): it signals the use of a strong negative polarity item (in this case a transparent one: une cenele).14 If that were true, it would lend further evidence to the hypothesis that pas at all stages was restricted to non-veridical downward-entailing contexts. The word goutte underwent the same development as mie but retained a sortal restriction to certain verbs, and certain types of complements. It can serve to illustrate another measure-like use of negation particles, namely in combination with the object noun. (5.91) ½½goutte ¼ lPlQ9x( P(x) ^ Minimal(x,P) ^ Q(x) ) Alt( goutte ) ¼ { lPlQ9x( P(x) ^ Little(x,P) ^ Q(x) ), lPlQ9x( P(x) ^ Some(x,P) ^ Q(x) ), lPlQ9x( P(x) ^ Much(x,P) ^ Q(x) ), . . . } Pragmatic function: must be used in emphatic focus. The Wrst clause states that goutte can be used like a determiner, combine with a noun N to yield a generalized quantiWer that can be paraphrased as ‘there is some minimal quantity of ½½N which does Q’. The focus alternatives again 14 This function is comparable to German auch nur in combination with a strong NPI; the case is diYcult to illustrate in English because the translation even is polysemous between an NPI use and a focus particle use which are extremely tricky to distinguish (for a recent attempt with comparison to German, see Schwarz 2002).
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comprise larger quantity determiners, and the pragmatic function as before ensures that the word is used as a negative polarity item. The nouns personne and rien, Wnally, had to change nothing but their focus alternatives in order to become negative polarity items. I will continue to use personne as the example case of the two: (5.92) ½½personne ¼ lQ9x( Person(x) ^ Q(x) ) ‘some person’ Alt(personne) ¼ {lQ 9x( Baker(x) ^ Q(x) ), lQ9x( Priest(x) ^ Q(x) ), lQ9x( Butcher(x) ^ Q(x) ), . . . } Pragmatic function: must be used in emphatic focus. This covers the range of negative polarity uses of the most common negative particles in Old French, which is the stage labelled ‘emphatic negation’ on the Jespersen cline. Before we move on to the loss of emphasis, let us take a closer look at a branching development shown by mie. The adverbial meaning of mie (NPI) proposed in (5.88) is best paraphrased as ‘in any way’. This is the use found in quotes like (5.14) where the speaker makes a temporal assertion ‘I will not be kept here for long’ and continues with a conditional: ‘. . . if I can do anything about it’. Other examples like (5.17) use mie in a temporal sense ‘ever’. In such examples, mie modiWes verbs like savoir (¼ ‘know’), trouver (¼ ‘Wnd’), or eˆtre (¼ ‘to be’, ‘there is’), and it is quite clear from context that what is at stake is not diVerent degrees of knowing, diVerent ways of Wnding, or diVerent ways of existence. Reasonably, we translate (5.17) as ‘that one ever knew’ (and other examples ‘that was ever found’, ‘that ever existed’, etc.). This suggests that mie underwent reanalysis from manner adverb to time adverb. This reanalysis is just a minor side aspect in the analysis of the Jespersen cline. While the cline is extremely well documented by source data, the side track of mie to date can only be speculated on. The following example might illustrate the nature of the reanalysis. (5.93) Did he mie apologize? ¼old reading : Did he apologize in any way? ¼new reading : Did he ever apologize? Understanding an utterance like (5.93) in this way suggested that mie had to make the semantic contribution of a negative polarity sensitive temporal adverb. Note that mie slipped into the category of NPIs of most general property with this reanalysis. (5.94) ½½mie3 ¼ lPle.9t( P(e) ^ e Happens-At t) Focus alternatives: other, more speciWc times { lPle.9t( P(e) ^ e Happens-At t ^ Last Year(t) ), lPle.9t( P(e) ^ e Happens-At t ^ This-Week(t) )
166
From Step to Negation lPle.9t( P(e) ^ e Happens-At t ^ March4th,2001(t) ), . . . }
This example shows that speakers were very well aware that mie was a polarity sensitive item, they just had a choice as to which one. We can now go to the end of Jespersen’s cline and consider ‘loss of emphasis’. The present analysis explicates the information contributed by emphasis in semantic terms. Particularly, emphasis is viewed as a rhetorical Wgure that evokes alternatives and a very speciWc pragmatic side message. ‘Loss of emphasis’ in the present analysis is tantamount to the following: . .
speaker and hearer no longer understand alternative propositions to be salient, and speaker and hearer no longer understand that the asserted proposition is the most surprising one among alternatives.
The failure to understand the respective constructions as emphatic (both in perception and production) will have the following further long-term eVects: . . .
hence, items cease to be subject to pragmatically motivated licensing conditions (because pragmatic side messages cease to be understood) the fact that these items only occur in restricted contexts, however, remains part of the collective linguistic knowledge the restrictions are no longer contentful but follow simpler surface patterns. SpeciWcally, negative particles in French were used in combination with negation.
In this process, speaker communities for some time conserved the intuition that the complex negation phrase diVers from bare non/ne negation. It is stylistically restricted to contexts of emotional involvement. The Modern French use of point illustrates the diVerence between semantic-pragmatic emphasis and stylistic emphasis. Catalani (2001) shows that point was the last particle on Jespersen’s cline. In Old French, it displays the most varied sample of ‘puzzling uses’, i.e. uses in downward-entailing contexts beyond negation. In Middle French, such uses still occur with suYcient frequency that Catalani (2001) discusses them as a separate case.15 Consequently, we can witness the loss of emphasis period for point in Middle and Early Modern French. The transient nature of stylistic emphasis is nicely reXected in the following summary, written by Schweickha¨user in the nineteenth century. OYcial wardens of grammar were seeking to rationalize the stylistic diVerence and link it to the ‘strength of negation’: 15 Catalani does not, however, draw the link between emphatic negation, NPI-hood, and being on the road to negation.
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Voici comment elle [¼ l’Acade´mie Franc¸aise] s’exprime a` l’article Ne: ‘Point nie plus fortement que pas. . . . Ainsi, point, suivi de la particule de, forme une ne´gation absolue; au lieu que pas laisse la liberte´ de restreindre, de re´server.’ Here is how it (¼ the Acade´mie Franc¸aise) expresses itself in the article on Ne: ‘Point negates more strongly than pas. . . . Likewise, point followed by particle de is an absolute negation; while pas leaves the possibility to restrict, or reserve.’ (Schweickha¨user, 1852: 94)
Schweickha¨user himself, in contrast, denies any logical diVerence between pas and point in French at this time. He argues that the choice between the two may as well be driven by other stylistic considerations like metre, the need to avoid repetition, etc. Here is a particularly strong passage where he discusses the choice between pas and point as mere accident: Tout cela n’est que du caprice et de l’arbitraire . . . Ce qu’il y a de certain, c’est que Molie`re e´tait loin de soupc¸onner ces e´trangete´s, quand il e´crivait la phrase suivante: Quelle frugalite´ d’ajustement et quelle se´cheresse de conversation! On n’y dure point, on n’y tient pas. (Les Pre´cieuses ridicules, 4) C’est l’oreille, et rien de plus, qui a de´cide´ Molie`re a` substituer dans la seconde membre de la phrase le mot pas au mot point. All this is nothing but whims and arbitrariness . . . What is sure is that Molie`re was far from having any idea about these strange things when he wrote the following phrase: ‘. . . One does not endure, one does not hold.’ It is the ear and nothing else that drove Molie`re to substitute pas for point in the second part of the phrase. (Schweickha¨user 1852: 94)
The analysis developed in the present chapter explains the diVerences in quality between emphatic negation and ‘strong negation’ as a stylistic shading. Emphatic negation resulted from emphasis (a pragmatically well-deWned process), due to the lexical requirements of pas, point, rien, etc. Stylistic conventions concern the proper choice of expression among a range of semantically equivalent options (e.g. pas vs. point). The stylistic requirement is easier to violate. The attitude of the speaker is signalled by register rather than concise pragmatic side messages. In the Wnal stage of the Jespersen cline, negation particles are used as an integral part of negation without pragmatic or stylistic information. The presence or absence of competing forms will have repercussions on maintenance or loss of undertones. The particles mie and pas, being in dialectal variation (Price 1962), never were perceived as a minimal pair that required semantic or stylistic diVerentiation. The particle goutte most likely never reached the stage of non-emphatic negation.16 The particles personne and 16
This may have been due to its sortal restrictions. But then, we may ask ourselves why goutte never showed a tendency to overcome these very sortal restrictions. All in all, I cannot say anything elucidating in that respect.
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From Step to Negation
Table 5
transparent: Emphatic focus under negation adverb of subminimal degree,NPI alternatives adverb of degree, NPI alternatives temporal adverb, NPI alternatives NPI alternatives
mie x
goutte x
point x
personne
rien
x
x
pas x
loss of NPI alternatives, stilistic emphatic negation regular negation, negative quantifier
rien Wnally are semantically restricted enough to remain in use in addition to pas/point. The continuing stylistic restrictions on point may be conserved by the presence of alternative pas. Table 5 oVers an overview over the diVerent parts of the Jespersen cline that were analysed in the present section.
5.5 Summary The present chapter was devoted to the Jespersen cline to negation. On the basis of developments in French, I drew attention to the fact that this development did not proceed as straightforwardly as previous accounts suggest. All the (former) nouns, later particles, that entered into the development were used in ‘puzzling’ ways that, at Wrst sight, were licensed neither by their older literal meanings nor by their new use as part of negation. The fact that all six particles under consideration occurred in puzzling uses strongly suggests that ‘puzzling uses’ were not a mere halo of accidential variation around the straight Jespersen pathway. This is further supported by an intuitive evaluation of these ‘stray’ uses. Ever since the nineteenth century, scholars have expressed their intuition that ‘stray uses’ were in fact an integral part of this particular kind of development towards negation. Yet these authors were not advanced enough in synchronic linguistic research to be able to express, and test, these intuitions with an explicitness that would raise them beyond the level of gut feelings. Consequently, the connection between emphatic negation and negative polarity never became part of the oYcial
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picture. Jespersen (1917) does not make mention of the crucial data at all. In recent years, Posner (1984) recognized the existence of isolated uses of negation particles in a positive sense in NPI contexts (based on purely synchronic data, though). Price (1993) likewise tentatively raised this theme in connection with the use of pas and point in question. Yet, if we may take the complete lack of reference to relevant data in Posner (1997) as evidence (she oVers a very thorough survey on language change in French from its earliest stages till today in terms of modern grammar theory, and notably with a special chapter on the development of complex negation), we must conclude that the puzzling NPI uses of pas, point, mie, personne, rien, and goutte were perceived as a side issue rather than at the heart of the development. The pragmatic theory of negative polarity sensitivity oVered an analysis in which all aspects of the development fall into place. .
.
.
. .
.
.
Negative polarity sensitivity is analysed as the result of emphatic focusing and a speciWc kind of focus alternatives. Only in the right kind of contexts can these two factors interact in a coherent way. Elsewhere, NPIs are not licensed. Emphatic negation is simply the result of emphatic focus in a sentence with negation. Its pragmatic contribution to the sentence meaning comes about fully compositionally. Small measure phrases (point de, goutte de, rien de, . . . ) are predicted to be good sources for negative polarity sensitive items. In their NPI meaning, they are restricted to NPI licensing contexts. Emphatic negation is the result of emphatic focus of the NPI in the scope of negation. When speakers ceased to understand the emphatic scalar contribution of sentences with pas, point, goutte, rien, personne, or mie, the particles lost the lexical requirement that turned them into polarity sensitive items. The connection with negation was simple enough to retain the restriction to negated contexts. Other NPI contexts were, however, too varied to be maintained as licensing contexts. The particles became part of the negation, at Wrst with stylistic emphasis. Stylistic emphasis signals the speaker’s attitude, but has no truth conditional pragmatic eVects (e.g. presuppositions). Stylistic emphasis is therefore an unreliable eVect and tends to be lost. French negation particles exhibit an interesting range of variants of the Jespersen cline. In particular I hypothesized that pas had been a strong NPI in stages of French antedating Old French texts, thereby accounting for the limited kind of preserved ‘puzzling uses’ of the word.
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From Step to Negation
The main steps in this development have been instantiated in many languages, as already observed by Jespersen himself. A similar development took place, for instance, in Old High German where negation and polarity sensitive indeWnites start to develop into negative quantiWers:17 ni ‘not’ ni ‘not’
+ eˆo + ‘any’ + eˆo + ‘any’
+ wiht > + ‘thing’ + man > + ‘one’, ‘man’
nicht(s) ‘not, nothing’ niemand ‘nobody’
German word order however favoured agglutination of negation and NPI and therefore does not exhibit the described development with the same clarity as French. The expression neˆoman (in various spellings) is already an established word in OHG while the noun man was retained as a neutral noun in the lexicon. The older roots of the noun wiht seem to carry a clear NPI character in Old Germanic and Gothic, where they are listed as ‘commonly in negative contexts’ in dictionaries. The modern German descendant Wicht (‘little dwarf ’) goes back to the reading ‘demon’, while the existential-indeWnite use only left its trace as an inseparable part of nicht. The present chapter has oVered another illustration of how formal semantic theory can open up new perspectives in the investigation of grammaticalization. In the next chapter, we will trace semantic reanalysis in a more intricate interplay between meaning, focus, and presupposition. Once again, it will turn out that diachronic research can beneWt from the spade-work done in compositional semantics.
17 Note that eˆo is commonly listed as the adverbials ‘always’ as well as ‘once’, ‘at some unspeciWc time’. It hence seems to share with English any a double nature as existential and universal—a fact that would be worth an investigation in its own right, see Giannakidou (2001).
6 From Intensifier to Focus Particle
6.1 Introduction The present chapter is devoted to the development of an intensiWer into a focus particle. Let me Wrst outline the case in question. Many languages possess words or constructions that express that an action was performed by ‘A-in-person’, implying that the speaker had expected someone in the periphery of A, rather than A, to act. The common Germanic intensiWer selb/self as well as French meˆme oVer examples; extended overviews of the typology of intensiWers can be found in Moravcik (1972), Ko¨nig and Siemund (2000), or Heine and Kuteva (2002). While English self developed into the well-known reXexive paradigm, its German counterpart took another course. German selbst, like French meˆme, Norwegian selv, and related intensiWers in other European languages, developed a second reading as a focus particle, roughly synonymous to English even. The following examples illustrate the intensiWer use (6.1) and the focus particle use (6.2). (6.1) Der Ko¨nig selbst o¨Vnete die Tu¨r. ‘The king himself opened the door.’ (6.2) Selbst der Ko¨nig verstand den Witz. ‘Even the king understood the joke.’ A brief consultation of Grimms’ Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch (GDW: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch, 1838–1960) shows that intensifying selb (in various inXections) can be traced back to the oldest Germanic sources while the focus particle reading is much younger. The GDW oVers earliest focus particle uses around 1700 without further specifying the kind of contexts where the new use emerged. This question will be investigated in more detail in the next section. A considerable amount of research over the last thirty years has been concerned with this development, culminating in the comprehensive monograph Siemund (2000). However, Heine and Kuteva (2002) state, with respect
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From IntensiWer to Focus Particle
to the development from intensifying selbst (selbst/self or selbst1 in the following) to focus particle selbst (also brieXy selbst/even or selbst2 ), that ‘more research is required on . . . the question of whether ‘‘even’’ really is a grammaticalized use or else a constituent part of the meaning of intensive reXexives’ (p. 182). This is all the more surprising as the development, even though only attested in Indo-European languages, ‘appears to be conceptually plausible’ (2002: 182). Selbst seems to pose one of the examples where the plausibility of the development in question has blinded theoretical research. Certainly, the most comprehensive recent accounts of the development of selbst/self > selbst/even have been developed by Ekkehard Ko¨nig and colleagues, as witnessed for instance by Ko¨nig (1992), Ko¨nig and Siemund (1996), Siemund (2000), Hole (2002); Eckardt (2001) surveys a more comprehensive range of related literature. Ko¨nig and Siemund defend an attractively simple picture of the development in question. The baseline of their view consists in the observation that all variants of selbst have a lot in common. SpeciWcally . . .
both selbst1 and selbst2 associate with something (an NP, a focused element) both selbst1 and selbst2 refer to a scale of ‘what is to be expected’ both selbst1 and selbst2 (usually) state an unexpected fact, and express surprise about this unexpected fact.
In view of these commonalties, they come to the conclusion that the step from selbst/self to selbst/even is a matter of minor variation rather than a fullXedged change. Ko¨nig and Siemund assume that ‘selbst/self and selbst/even are basically the same focus particle, simply subject to slightly diVerent (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic) conventions of use’.1 According to this account, one will conclude that the diachronic change amounts to no more than independent and minimal variations in the conventional patterns of use of one and the same word in German. While the spirit of this approach certainly does justice to Heine and Kuteva’s intuition that the change be ‘conceptually plausible’, it underrates the fact that selbst/self and selbst/even are still two diVerent things—witnessed not only by the fact that English possesses one of the variants of self but not the other one, but also by the observation that the two items diVer in many respects.
1
The claim is implicit in the quoted papers. Both Ko¨nig and Siemund repeatedly assert that selbst/ self is a focus particle, ‘something like even’, and they oVer no further attempt to spell out the meaning of selbst1 .
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173
First, selbst/self can only associate with noun phrases. In its adnominal use (see (6.1)), it is even restricted to deWnite noun phrases, proper names, and speciWc indeWnites. The focus particle selbst/even, in contrast, can associate with any focused part of the sentence, including quantifying noun phrases, verbs, verb phrases, adjectives, adverbials, other particles, etc. Selbst/even behaves exactly like its English counterpart here, and I therefore refrain from oVering examples. Secondly, selbst/self always has to be accented. This regularity is so reliable that the intensiWer is sometimes called ‘stressed selbst’ in contrast to the focus particle which is practically always unstressed.2 The fact has even made its way into language teaching: Stock (1996), a textbook on German intonation for foreign students, devotes a separate paragraph to selbst/selber (¼self ) which are characterized as ‘immer akzentuiert’ (‘always stressed’, Stock 1996: 56). The mere fact that selbst/self is accented would not, in and of itself, mark an essential diVerence between this item and its counterpart selbst/even. It has frequently been noted that certain focus particles are stressed in postponed positions. While e.g. Reis and Rosengren (1997) argue that this is a mere idiosyncrasy at the syntax-prosody level, Krifka (1998) oVers a semanticpragmatic account for additive particles under stress which assigns a regular pragmatic eVect to the accent pattern in question. My eventual analysis does not adopt either position: while I will argue that the stress on selbst does indeed carry pragmatic information, the case of selbst will not turn out as a sub-case of Krifka (1998). Thirdly, the prosody of the associated element of the two selbsts is also diVerent. While selbst/even, like English ‘even’, requires a focus accent on the associating element, the associating element of selbst/self typically remains unaccented. The contrast is illustrated in (6.3) and (6.4), where accenting is indicated by capital letters.3 (6.3) Selbst [der alte GROSSvater]f liebt Musik von Abba. selbst the old grandfather loves music by Abba ‘Even the old GRANDfather loves music by Abba.’
2 We disregard corrective utterances here. Even in this realm, it is hard to think of a natural context where selbst corrects for another particle. 3 The rule that the associated element of selbst/self remains unaccented has, superWcially speaking, one exception in sentences of the type ‘BODO wusch sein Auto SELBST (aber KARL ließ es von der WERKSTATT waschen)’ ¼ ‘BODO washed his car by HIMSELF, but CARL let his car be washed by THE GARAGE’. The accent on Bodo is however due to another kind of focusing construction, as will become clear in section 6.3. Presumably, the reader also might immediately have the intuition that this is a diVerent case.
174
From IntensiWer to Focus Particle
(6.4) Der alte Grossvater SELBST liebt Musik von Abba. the old grandfather himself loves music by Abba ‘The old grandfather HIMSELF loves music by Abba.’ Fourthly, all uses of selbst/self show the so-called centrality eVects while uses of selbst/even never do. Example (6.5) illustrates the eVect. Again, this matches with English intensifying N-self sentences. (6.5) Die kleine Truppe kam erst spa¨t nach Hause. Peter SELBST war the little group came only late to home Peter himself was unverwundet. unwounded ‘The little troop came home only late. Peter HIMSELF was unwounded.’ The use of selbst in the second sentence suggests that Peter must be in some sense central in the little troup, be its leader, or constituting the perspective of the narrative here.4 It has been observed at various places that intensiWers not only raise alternatives to the referent (person or thing) they associate with, but moreover suggest that the actual referent (here: Peter) is in some sense central in these alternatives which, in other words, form its entourage. The term was proposed Wrst in (Ko¨nig 1992) and taken up e.g. in Baker (1995), Kemmer (1995) (predecessors of the notion can be traced in Edmondson and Plank 1978, Plank 1979). I follow the proposal in Siemund (2000) and assume that the actual content of the core–periphery structure on the set of alternatives is a matter of case-to-case instantiation while the pattern as such is a constant in the meaning of selbst/self sentences. The important thing for us to note is that selbst/even never gives rise to centrality eVects. Fifth, all uses of selbst/even make a scalar statement, relative to some contextually given scale of surprise or unlikeliness. In fact, the very content of even (and selbst in this sense) consists in stating this kind of surprise. Intensifying selbst/self, in contrast, allows for ‘unsurprised’ uses. This was Wrst noted by Edmondson and Plank (1978), and example (6.6) shows a case in question: (6.6) (Discussing the headgear of oYcials at court:) Der Ko¨nig SELBST trug eine Krone. The king himself wore a crown.
4 I will not bore the reader with the less straightforward possible scenarios that could license selbst/ self here. It is, however, worth mentioning that simple generalizations like ‘N-self must always be of highest rank’ or ‘N-self is bad if N is only a farmer, but good if N is the king’ (a tendency stated in Edmondson and Plank 1978) can easily be falsiWed.
From IntensiWer to Focus Particle
175
It is in no sense surprising that the king should wear a crown—who else, in fact, should? This intuition can even be highlighted by adding an adverbial like ‘predictably’ or ‘as to be expected’ (erwartbarerweise). While the prosody notated in (6.6) will eventually require some reWnements, the basic observation constitutes yet another solid diVerence between selbst/self and selbst/even. Sixth, selbst/self and selbst/even diVer in the kind of implicit statements with respect to alternatives. German selbst/even is additive: it is always understood that all salient alternative propositions (see section 4.2) hold true as well. This even works in cases like (6.7) where we would not plausibly expect this. (6.7) Susan wurde selbst [vom PAPST]f getauft. Susan became even by-the pope christened ‘Susan was even christened [by the POPE]f ’ The German (6.7) presupposes that Susan was also christened by all alternatives to the pope (e.g. the bishop, the cardinal, the local priest), which evokes the somewhat odd suggestion that Susan was christened several times.5 The intensiWer selbst/self, in contrast, contributes an indiVerent meaning that can be enriched to additive or exclusive statements depending on context. The overall information of the sentence depends on various factors, including position, verb type, contextual information, etc. (see Siemund 2000). The following two examples illustrate either use.6 (6.8) Der Ko¨nig selbst hielt die Rede. ‘The king himself gave the speech.’ (exclusive: instead of anybody else) (6.9) Der Ko¨nig selbst verstand den Witz. ‘The king himself understood the joke.’ (plausibly: in addition to everybody else) Seventh and Wnally, the syntactic positions of selbst/self and selbst/even relative to the associated element diVer dramatically. Intensifying selbst appears either ad-nominally (¼ in direct sisterhood to the associated element) or in an adverbial position, in any case after the associated element. Focus particle selbst patterns with other focus particles in German, being required to precede and in fact c-command the focused phrase. Inversions analogous to English ‘PAUL even could understand the proof ’ would sound stilted and are
5 German sogar diVers from selbst in that it is not additive. If we replace selbst by sogar in (6.7), we get a perfectly sensible statement. English informants reported that the additivity of English even seems to depend on its position; a fact that is so far unexplored in the literature. 6 The factors that determine whether a selbst statement is understood to be additive or exclusive are very intricate. A wide variety of cases is discussed in Eckardt (2001).
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From IntensiWer to Focus Particle
Table 6 selbst1 ( -self)
selbst2 ( even)
1. associates with NP (adnominally: with deWnites, proper names, and speciWc indeWnites) 2. accent on selbst 3. no accent on associated element 4. centrality eVects 5. non-scalar uses are possible
associates with anything
6. additive and exclusive uses 7. usually follows associated element
no accent on selbst accent on associated element no centrality eVects all uses involve a scale (of surprise/likelihood/ strikingness) only additive use precedes associated element (c-command, locality)
restricted to poetry and somewhat archaic-sounding literary style. In summary, we have the seven diVerences shown in Table 6. Crucially, this two-way distinction of selbst-s covers all reported uses of selbst. There exist no uses of selbst that mark an intermediate point on the development from selbst/self to selbst/even. All uses conform either to the left column of the table, or to the right column of the table. We do not Wnd, for instance, uses of selbst which would exhibit the accent pattern of selbst/self and yet combine with a verb (as selbst/even could do), or any other mixed forms one can think of. The reader might have the justiWed feeling that it is not by accident that the seven diVerences between selbst/self and selbst/even all appear in one step. The question: ‘Why do all these diVerences appear in unison?’ in some good sense can be answered by: ‘How else should it be!’ As in both preceding chapters, the problem is not a historical one (why did the change not happen in a diVerent way?) but one of theory adequacy (why can’t we explicate that it couldn’t have?). Ko¨nig and Siemund’s analysis of the development selbst/self > selbst/even and all previous treatments seem to trust the logical necessity of this magical harmony so profoundly that no attempt was ever made to explain it. However, explained it needs to be. If the two selbsts were indeed only variants of the same word, subject to slightly diVerent conventions of use, we would expect that such conventions should change gradually, step by step, and with a certain amount of variation. Before we enter into the depths of these questions, I will use the next section to oVer a more detailed overview over the use(s) of selbst in diVerent contexts between 1600 and 1700. While the source texts themselves are
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quite unspectacular—data mostly seem to reXect another poetic fashion in seventeenth-century German—the quest for data will deepen our understanding of the preconditions for reanalysis. In particular, the case oVers another opportunity to investigate the diVerence between a latent language change (¼ the necessary source construction is available) and the initiation of that change (¼ speciWc utterances of the source construction are of a kind that invites reanalysis).
6.2 The Data A Wrst consultation of the Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch (GDW) suggests that uses of selbst/even started in the Wrst decades of the eighteenth century. An early, unclear use by B. H. Brockes at about 1715 is complemented by a wider choice of clear uses in the second half of the eighteenth century (e.g. Friedrich Schiller, c.1780, Ludwig Heinrich Ho¨lty, after 1765) as well as a mention in Adelung’s writings on the grammar of German (around 1780).7 Yet GDW does not oVer any information about the contexts in which the reading emerged. In order to get a clearer picture, the resources of the Gutenberg Corpus (PG) were consulted.8 In the full search of all texts after 1600 it soon became clear that the crucial period of change must have been located in the seventeenth century rather than the eighteenth, where we early on Wnd unambiguous uses of selbst/even. The seventeenth and early eighteenth century is represented in the PG corpus by plays, prose, and poetry of twenty-three authors (a full listing of the searched texts is given in the references). The earliest seventeenth-century author is Martin Opitz (d. 1639) who already exhibits all those shades in the use of selbst that will pertain over the next seventy years until the corpus oVers the Wrst unambiguous uses of selbst/even. The texts show that a certain type of additive superlative construction was quite common at the time, based on the use of intensifying selbst. (6.10) to (6.12) oVer some examples:
7 Sadly, the quotation practices in GDW are not very concise. The Ho¨lty quote is from an edition of his poems that appeared only after the poet’s death in 1776; likewise the exact locus of the Adelung quote could not be determined. Yet the dates should be approximately correct, given that Adelung’s grammatical writings stem from the years between 1774 and 1786, and under the reasonable assumption that Ho¨lty, born in 1748, did not start literary production before his 16th birthday. 8 Projekt Gutenberg, a non-commercial corpus of German literary texts (version 2001, with few additions in 2002). The corpus is not designed particularly for linguistic research. While keyword search in the texts can be done conveniently, the determination of the source is not always easy and early quotes must usually be veriWed in a trustworthy edition of the text.
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(6.10) AuV diese weise sind die Ro¨mer mit den Griechen / vnd die on this manner are the Romans with the Greeks and the newen scribenten mit den alten verfahren: so das sich Virgilius new writers with the old proceeded: so that REFL Virgilius selber nicht gescha¨met / gantze pla¨tze auß andern zue himself not ashamed was whole places from others to entlehnen . . . borrow ‘In this way the Romans dealt with the Greeks / and the new scribes with the old ones: such that Virgilius himself was not ashamed to borrow entire passages from others . . .’ (Martin Opitz, Deutsche Poeterey: ch. 8, 1624) (6.11) Der strenge Titan sengt mit glu¨endt-heissen licht the stern titan burns with red-hot light die du¨rren garben weg die Erden selber bricht . . . the dry sheaves away the earth itself breaks ‘the stern titan is burning with red-hot light the dry sheaves away, Earth itself is breaking . . .’ (Andreas Gryphius, Leo Arminius: I. 4, 1650) (6.12) der scho¨ne Endymon, um welchen die keusche Luna selbst the beautiful Endymion for whom the chaste Luna herself gebuhlet, war auch ein Hirt . . . courted was also a shepherd ‘beautiful Endymion, who was courted by chaste Luna herself, was a shepherd as well . . .’ (Hans Jakob ChristoVel von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus: book I, ch. 2, 1667) All sentences convey a universal statement (‘everyone borrowed from earlier authors’, ‘everything was destroyed’, ‘everybody courted Endymion’) by choosing a supreme instance in the domain quantiWed over (‘Virgilius’, ‘Earth’, ‘chaste Luna’) and stating that X itself partook in the process, state, practice, event in question. By scalar implication and background knowledge, the reader will understand that if X itself did B then everyone else did B as well—which is the intended universal statement. The universal character of this kind of scalar implication was discussed in Fauconnier (1975a) and is systematically exploited in utterances of the above type. These superlatives occur quite frequently, and some of the authors (e.g. Martin Optiz in Zlatna, Andreas Gryphius, or Christian HoVman von HoVmanswaldau) visibly demonstrate their humanistic aYnity to the world of classical Greek and Latin by making sophisticated allusions to antique mythology in their choice of
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extremal instances. Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius Simplicissimus (1767: ch. 2) caricatures this practice: the hero, a ‘simplicius’ of rural origin, justiWes his poor education by a cascade of comparisons to other heroes in history and classical mythology who ‘themselves’ had only been shepherds—thereby contradicting the very point of his speech. These are, of course, not the only uses of selbst. They are complemented by a wide variety of non-additive intensifying selbst, and, even more popular for some authors, deictics on the basis of selbst: daselbst, derselbe, dasselbe, etc. (‘there-self ’, ‘the-same’, ‘that-same’). Hence, selbst nicely exempliWes once more that language change by reanalysis is initiated in speciWc onset contexts and not a process that would apply to words as such, in the abstract. Yet, the crucial construction—use a superlative in order to make an additive statement—clearly existed before the seventeenth century. Earlier authors in PG use it, as random samples in the texts of PG before 1600 reveal. In the seventeenth century, however, this construction started to be used in a new and peculiar way: My second Wnding was that these additive superlative constructions tended to enjoy more syntactic freedom and less pragmatic support, particularly in poetry. Notably, the N-selbst in many instances is conceptualized as central in some set of alternatives only ‘on the spot’, motivated by the poem. The core–periphery structure does not very much reXect a commonly shared way to perceive the world. Let me illustrate this somewhat vague diagnosis with several examples. Consider Opitz’s poem ‘An Herrn Johann Wessel’ (with extended contexts): (6.13) An Herren Johannem Wesselium Welch Jammer war nun da? Man sah’ auV allen Gassen In ho¨chster Einsamkeit die Ha¨user gantz verlassen: Der Vatter ließ sein Kind das Kind den Vatter stehn Vnd dorVte sicherlich kein Mensch zusammen gehn. ‘What misery was now there? One saw on all streets in highest loneliness the houses entirely deserted: / the father left the child, the child left the father (standing) and certainly no men might go together.’ Die Vo¨gel machten selbst sich in die ferren Wu¨sten the birds made ‘selbst’ REFL into the far deserts Vnd wolten auß Gefahr nunmehr bey vns nicht nisten. and wanted for danger now near us not nest ‘The birds ‘selbst’ (themselves/even?) left for the far deserts and no longer wanted to nest with us, out of danger.’ (Martin Opitz (1624), in Opitz 1624 [1978]: ii/2. 575)
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From IntensiWer to Focus Particle
This oVers a typical illustration of poorly motivated selbst/self. The intended core–periphery structure birds and periphery has to be accommodated. The context suggests that ‘birds’ are opposed to ‘humans’, ‘fathers’, ‘children’. The scalar statement is likewise easy to understand: even birds leave their homes. It is diYcult, however, to Wnd a suitable way in which ‘birds’ are the central core of the alternatives in this context. We will later see that the crucial diVerence between selbst/-self and selbst/even lies in the fact that the former evokes alternatives that show a core–periphery structure, while the latter refers to unstructured alternatives. (6.13) does not rest on a good core–periphery structure. All the reader will understand is this: the author thinks that among all consequences of a dangerous situation, the eVect that the birds move away is the least likely, most striking one. Thinking in terms of focus alternatives (see section 4.3), this corresponds to focus projection to the sentence level. I oVer some more examples. (6.14) Vber den Abschied einer Edelen Jungfrawen (Opitz) . . . Das gru¨ne Feld beginnt vmb seine Zier zu trawren / Die andern Blumen auch thut jhre Schwester tawren / ‘. . . The green Weld begins to mourn for its embellishment the other Xowers likewise must feel sorry for their sister Die Bienen Xiegen selbst vor Schmertz’ vnd Trawrigkeit the bees Xy ‘selbst’ before pain and sadness Verjrrt jetzt hin / jetzt her / vnd tragen grosses Leid. erring now there now here and carry great mourning ‘the bees ‘‘selbst’’ (themselves/even?) Xy, for grief and sorrow, erring now here / now there and carry great mourning.’ (Martin Opitz (1624), in Opitz 1624 [1978]: ii/2. 577) Once again, it is easy to understand the scalar message ‘even the bees are mourning’, but it is harder to see the kind of domain in which the bees are the central core. Let me highlight this lack by resorting to the English translation The bees themselves are mourning. In the next section, we will see that the English intensiWer -self like its German counterpart evokes core–periphery structures. The English sentence evokes the immediate question: ‘The bees, instead of who else?’ Exactly this kind of reaction was evoked for readers in 1624 who understood selbst in (6.14) in its old sense. The clearest case is oVered in Andreas Gryphius’ play (in rhyme) Leo Arminius, II. 5 (1650): (6.15)
Man kan / es ist nicht ohn / ein blut begierig Thier Gewo¨hnen daß es spiel vnd nieder knie vor dir /
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Man kan / waß noch viel mehr / die starcke Xut vmbkehren. Den stro¨men widerstehn / den tollen wellen wehren. Man da¨mpVt der Xammen macht / man segelt gegen wind / Man stu¨rtz’t die felsen hin wo tha¨l vnd ho¨len sind. ‘One can, it’s not easy, a bloodthirsty animal train so that it will play and kneel down before you One can, which is even more, reverse the strong Xood resist the streams, restrain the wild waves One damps the mighty Xames, one sails against the winds One throws boulders where there are valleys and holes.’ Man kan die steine selbst mit weitzen u¨berziehen. one can the stones ‘selbst’ with wheat cover ‘One can cover the stones ‘‘selbst’’ (themselves/even?) with wheat . . .’ Once more, there is no common perception of the stones as the central core in an entourage of opposing objects. The earlier dangers—bloodthirsty animals, Xoods, wild waves—are more frightening than a mere stone. While the stones are hence not a very good centre in a periphery of dangerous objects here, there is a clear scalar message. The entire task ‘to cover stones with wheat’ is plausibly extremal on a scale of increasingly hard tasks and selbst, not really making sense in association with the noun steine here, is understood to contribute this kind of scalar information. The example is of particular interest because, as noted in the previous section, one of the diVerences between selbst1 and selbst2 is that the latter, but not the former, can associate with full propositions. The Wnal Wnding was that this kind of oscillating use of selbst in superlative constructions occurs prevalently in poetry (including rhymed plays) and only rarely in prose. The prose part of Opitz’s Deutsche Poeterey (1624), Andreas Gryphius’ Horribilicribifax teutsch (1663), Grimmelshausen’s Keuscher Joseph (1667), Christian Weise’s Masianello (1683), and Reuter’s SchlemuVsky (1696/7) all use intensifying selbst with great care and always in reference to suitable core–periphery structures. Isolated instances of ill-licensed selbst1 only occur in Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus (1667) (Abraham a Sancta Clara’s Narrennest (1703) oVers one other case). (6.16)
. . . das Geschrei beides der Verwundten und Angreifenden machten neben den Trompeten, Trommeln und Pfeifen ein erschreckliche Musik! da sah man nichts als einen dicken Rauch und Staub welcher schien, als wollte er die Abscheulichkeit der Verwundten und Toten bedecken, in demselbigen ho¨rete man ein ja¨mmerliches Weheklagen der Sterbenden und ein lustiges Geschrei derjenigen, die noch voller Mut staken,
182
From IntensiWer to Focus Particle ‘the cries of both the wounded and the attacking made, next to the trumpets, drums, and pipes, a terrible music! one saw nothing but a thick smoke and dust which seemed to wish to cover the awfulness of the wounded and dying, at the same time one could hear a wretched wailing of the dying and the merry cries of those who were still full of courage’ die Pferd selbst hatten das Ansehen, als wenn sie zu Verteidigung the horses ‘selbst’ had the appearance as if they to defence ihrer Herrn je la¨nger je frischer wu¨rden, . . . of-their masters the longer the fresher became ‘the horses ‘‘selbst’’ (themselves/even?) had the appearance as if they became fresher the longer the battle went on, in defence of their masters . . .’ (Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, 1667: book II, ch. 27)
The modern reader’s spontaneous impression that selbst was used in its ‘even’ sense here derives, as in the earlier cases, from the fact that the associate noun phrases do not denote good cores in some periphery (‘the horses’ as the core of a battle, ‘night’ as the core of the day?) The entire statements plausibly convey information that is in some sense most striking (‘even the horses were driven away by pugnacity’, ‘the fantast did not even sleep at night’). After 1720, we Wnd clear instances of the focus particle selbst/even, like the following example:9 (6.17) Sein guter natu¨rlicher Verstand und sein artiges Benehmen, ja auch his good natural reason and his polite behaviour prt also selbst der sanfte Ton seiner Stimme erwarb ihm . . . ‘selbst’ the soft sound of-his voice gained him soviel Liebe, daß . . . so-much love that ‘His sharp natural wit and his polite behaviour, and even also the soft sound of his voice, gained him . . . so much love, that . . .’ (Christian Friedrich Weichmann, Adliger Student, 1725) In summary, the data suggest that selbst in its use as a focus particle took its origin in superlative constructions (‘NN himself did that—too’). These were 9 Note that the Wrst example contradicts the rule in contemporary German that the variant selber is unambiguously intensifying (see also Siemund 2000, Hole 2002). I can only adopt the judgement of GDW who state that the use of various (inXected?) forms at that time does not follow any visible regularities; likewise it can only be hypothesized that selbst was originally an inXected genitive of the root selb. The convention to use only selbst in the sense ‘even’ must hence date later.
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used particularly in verse, and particularly there in ways which did not always obey the pragmatic licensing conditions that apply to intensifying selbst. The latter will be investigated in more detail in the following sections where I will come back to the ambivalent examples. The claim that a new reading of a word emerged in poetry and spread from there to the entire language community may be somewhat surprising. Today, poetry is a genre with limited audience and little linguistic inXuence. The cultural elite in Germany at the time attempted to deWne a national cultural identity against the background of, and in emancipation from, antique science and literature. The deWnition and development of the German language was one part of this process, and one where wide parts of the educated classes actively took part in the discussion. Martin Opitz was a leading Wgure in the community of German literary authors in the seventeenth century. His book Von der deutschen Poeterey was regarded as setting the rules for good language use in German poetry (e.g. Borries and Borries 1991: 351 V.) and his language was certainly a model for literary writing in the decades after his death in 1639. Curiously, even several epigrams to Opitz’s grave take up superlative selbst. (6.18) Opitzens.(Grabschrift) Mich hat ein kleiner Ort der deutschen Welt gegeben / Der wegen meiner wird mit Rom die Wette leben. Ich suche nicht zu viel / ich bin genug gepriesen / Daß ich die Venus selbst im Deutschen unterwiesen. that I the Venus herself in German educated ‘A small town has given me to the German world which for my sake will compete with Rome I do not seek too much, I have been praised enough that I taught German to Venus herself.’ (Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau, before 1679) The exact connections between literary authors, and more importantly their impact on spoken language, would certainly need closer investigation in literary history in order to settle the question why the ‘even’ reading of selbst could spread and survive. Descriptions of the cultural life at the time however report that literary and poetic writing was a widespread occupation of the bourgeoisie in those days (Dietze 1963: 22 f.). Professional and spare-time writers organized clubs, societies, and regular meetings, discussing and comparing each other’s works. The acquaintance between older and younger members of a society could even result in mentoring and Wnancial support for gifted students. ProWcient use of the German language constituted one aspect of the ongoing process of deWning national art and science. As one consequence of this constellation, the boundaries between literary and
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educated language were blurred, and literary patterns may have had a good chance to spread via the higher classes into common language.10 The present section oVered an overview of the uses of selbst between 1600 and 1730, in particular uses that seem to tend towards an ‘even’ reading of selbst. I illustrated the problematic nature of some uses of selbst at the time, yet the more ambitious task of casting these intuitions into semantic theory still remains. In the next sections, I will therefore introduce the semantic tools to trace the emergence of selbst/even.
6.3 The Semantics of IntensiWcation The Wrst prerequisite to analyse an instance of meaning change consists in a concise description of (semantic) matters before and after the change. The case under investigation is particularly intriguing in that in the pre-stage and also in the post-stage of change, the overall content of the sentences in question is determined—in the respect that is of interest for us—by the interaction of word meaning and the interpretation of focus. Following the spirit of our enterprise so far, a mere paraphrase of the gross content of sentences will not be suYcient. We need a detailed semantic evaluation of word content, focus contribution, and their combination in the sentence. In fact, I will argue that the change from selbst/self to selbst/even involves a change in focus structure in the respective sentences, indicated by the systematic relocation of focus accent. It is therefore mandatory to base the analysis of the change on a sound analysis of (a) the semantics/pragmatics of intensiWcation and (b) the semantics/pragmatics of even. My exposition relies on the introduction of focus semantics in section 5.3. The focus particle even was already used in example (5.71) in 5.3.2, and its semantics can be transferred to selbst/even with slight adjustments. Following common practice, I assume that selbst2 is a focus sensitive operator that combines with the full sentence S in which it occurs. (Rooth 1985 reXects this by claiming that the operator is ‘raised’ to the syntactic top sentence node before interpretation. This operation allows for a clean parallel between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation and the reader may wish to adopt this view. I will not, however, enter into the intricate discussion of the rules that govern syntactic movement.) Under this assumption, the meaning contribution of selbst2 is as in (6.19): 10
It is in concord with these facts that many speakers of German (of diVerent regions) reported that selbst (even) in their ideolect belongs to the literary registers and is likely to be replaced by sogar (even) in informal communication.
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Interpretation of ½½selbst2 So Presuppositions: For all focus alternatives p’ in Alt(S), p’ holds true. ½½So is the least likely, most striking one among the focus alternatives in Alt(S) to hold true. Assertion: ½½So holds true as well.
While I refer the reader to the previous chapter for the details of focus interpretation in terms of sets of alternatives, let me illustrate the analysis by an example: (6.20) Maria wurde selbst2 [vom Papst]f Maria was ‘even’ by-the pope ‘Maria was baptized even by the pope’
getauft. baptized
Sentence (6.20) presupposes that all sentences of the form ‘Maria wurde von NN getauft’ (¼ ‘Maria was baptized by NN’) with NN some salient alternative of ‘the pope’ hold true: (6.21) p1 ¼ Maria was baptized by the bishop p2 ¼ Maria was baptized by the archbishop p3 ¼ Maria was baptized by the local priest . . . It moreover presupposes that the sentence content is the most striking one among these alternatives (for instance, because an ordinary person is not commonly baptized by CatholicoYcials of high rank). The sentence itself makes the assertion that ‘Maria was baptized by the pope’. Presupposition and assertion can be distinguished by the negation test: the negated sentence will, under normal circumstances, still presuppose that Maria was baptized by a crowd of high Catholic oYcials. Yet no baptizing by the pope is asserted in (6.22): (6.22) Es ist nicht der Fall, dass Maria selbst2 [vom Papst]f getauft wurde. ‘It is not the case that Maria was even baptized by the pope.’ Having thus recapitulated the semantic analysis of a sentence with selbst2 , let me now turn to the semantics of intensiWcation. I will basically follow the analysis in Eckardt (2001). The quoted paper oVers broader synchronic evidence in support of the analysis, but the diachronic perspective receives more attention in the present debate. Following an early proposal by Moravcik (1972), I propose that the core meaning contribution of selbst is the identity function Id on the domain of objects De .
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(6.23) Id: De ! De Id(a) ¼ a for all a 2 De In the adnominal case, this function can immediately be combined with the referent of the NP, as illustrated in (6.24): (6.24) ½½ [Otto]NP selbst ¼ Id(½½Otto) ¼ ½½Otto This explains why adnominal intensifying selbst can only combine with noun phrases that denote some individual referent (as proper names, deWnites, and speciWc indeWnites do) but not with noun phrases that denote quantiWers (jeder vernu¨nftige Mensch ‘every reasonable man’, alle Kinder ‘all children’, or ein Kanzler ‘some chancellor’). In adverbial position, selbst denotes appropriately type-shifted variants of the identity function that combine with a verbal predicate and assert that one of the expected arguments is taken over ‘without change’. In this use, selbst modiWes the argument slot of the verb which will later be instantiated by the respective noun phrase. At that place, then, quantiWcation will not pose a problem, which explains why adverbial selbst, in contrast to adnominal selbst, can be combined with quantifying NPs without restrictions. Let me brieXy postpone the illustrating example that would be in place here because I will Wrst need to comment on a peculiar prediction of this analysis. Given that selbst denotes the identity function, it does not seem to contribute too much, in fact nothing, to the content of the sentence. This hardly seems a tenable analysis. Why should speakers use a word that instructs the hearer to replace a by a? Yet, this seeming drawback leads to correct predictions about the use of selbst1 : while selbst, under the proposed analysis, does not contribute to the truth conditional meaning of the sentence, it can still evoke meaningful alternatives under focus. These focus alternatives do make a contribution to the meaning of the sentence. The analysis therefore predicts that selbst should not be used unless it is put in focus—otherwise the word would be completely superXuous—and hence explains why selbst1 is always stressed. What kind of alternatives are evoked by the identity function? First remember that focus alternatives always are of the same logical type as the item in focus. In the present case, this amounts to the requirement that the alternatives be other functions. As in previous cases, the actual alternatives comprise only salient alternative functions that are suggested by the context. (6.25) ½½selbstf ¼ {f1 ,f2 ,f3 , . . . fk . . . jfi are contextually salient alternatives to Id }
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While the question ‘what choices of functions f . . . are allowed and reasonable’ will have to be addressed separately, the constellation itself already oVers the conceptual backbone of the widely studied centrality eVects. It is easy to see that a referent (i.e. the meaning of the noun phrase linked to selbst1 ) and a set of functions will together determine an induced set of alternative individuals, let us call it Alt*(a), where Alt*(a) ¼ {f1 (a),f2 (a),f3 (a), . . . fk (a)} is the set of all those individuals that we get if we apply some one of the alternative functions f1 , f2 , f3 , . . . fk . . . to the NP referent a. All other individuals are linked to the original referent a by being functionally derived from it or, in other words, a is central in the set of induced alternative individuals. Fig. 2 illustrates this. It is for this reason that the construction reliably refers to a core–periphery structure (centre and entourage, centrality eVects) on the set of alternative individuals under debate. The conceptual scheme core–periphery is instantiated in the actual utterance context. The spectrum of possible instantiations is surprisingly wide, as witnessed by an impressive body of literature (e.g. Baker 1995, Kemmer 1995, Siemund 2000). Siemund observes that all reported instantiations have in common that the (induced) alternative individuals are tied to the core element by an intuitively ‘uniform’ relation. In terms of the present account, this amounts to the following restriction: (6.26) The values f1 (a), f2 (a), f3 (a), . . . of a under f1 , f2 , f3 . . . must be tied to a in terms of a uniform relation. Let me give some examples. In a sentence like ‘the king himself opened the door’ (under the most likely reading) we might be concerned with functions that are tied together by the relation ‘x is a servant of y’ and hence will all map the king onto one of his servants. A sentence like ‘Otto himself prefers to spend the family holidays at the seaside’ might be based on functions that are
f1(a)
f5(a) f5
f4(a)
f4
Id a
f1 f2
f2(a)
f3 f3(a)
FIGURE 2 Set of induced alternatives of a on basis of the alternative functions {f1 , f2 , f3 , f4 , f5 }
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tied together by the relation ‘x is a family member of y’ and map ‘Otto’ onto some family member of Otto. The perspectival use as in ‘Susan felt ashamed. Had she herself really caused all the excitement?’ emerges through reference to the relation ‘x is one in the environment of y’, and makes use of functions that map the protagonist onto somebody in his or her environment. The righteous indignation use as in ‘But how can Anne make fun of smokers, given that she is a smoker herself!’ rests on the relation between Anne and smokers that she makes fun of, and will be evaluated with reference to functions that map Anne to some one of these smokers. (In this case, we face alternative propositions of the form Joe is a smoker, Sue is a smoker, Carl is a smoker, . . . and signal that under the given circumstances, Anne’s smoking is more questionable in moral terms than any other alternative because she not only smokes but is even a hypocrite.) At this point, an aside concerning the interaction of synchronic and diachronic semantic research seems in place. The range of possible core– periphery constellations above, and even more so the richer collections in the literature, make it hard for the trained investigator in the semantics of selbst1 to think of cases where some individual or object cannot be construed as the core of some periphery. It is all the more fascinating to see that the development from selbst/self to selbst/even in all likelihood was based on uses where the notion of core–periphery was extended beyond its conceptual limits. This was already suggested by the examples in the previous section and I will come back to the point at the end of section 6.4. The investigation of language change can hence oVer substantial input to synchronic semantic research, in particular about the limits of notions and concepts that we can so far only describe by vague paraphrases. In our case, for example, we have empirical evidence that the notion of core–periphery was over-exploited because this— among other factors—characterizes the uses just before meaning change. This kind of evidence surpasses introspective judgements because it rests on the intuitions of an entire speaker community and hence has a much more solid empirical standing than the judgement of one contemporary scholar (which can always be contradicted by the introspective judgement of another contemporary scholar). Of course, this kind of evidence is only available for a limited range of cases and can hence not become a regular tool in the investigation of concepts. So far, I have proposed a semantic interpretation of selbst1 and investigated its possible focus alternatives. In order to—Wnally—see the semantic evaluation of a real example, we just need to state what happens to these focus alternatives. The answer here is surprisingly systematic: focus (¼ ‘stress’) on selbst1 can be interpreted in all and exactly the ways in which focus elsewhere
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can be interpreted. It can associate with particles (‘only’, ‘also’, . . . ), it can interact with quantiWers (‘always’, ‘frequently’; for a recent more sophisticated account of such interaction see Beaver and Clark 2003, Beaver 2004), it can enter into other focus constructions like the rise–fall pattern (Bu¨ring 1997), and it can stand in emphatic focus (which played so dominant a role in Chapter 5). Having said that, we can go through some examples (a more extended range of sample constellations is discussed in Eckardt 2001). Sentence (6.29) shows association of a focus particle, nur, with focus on selbst—and keep straight that our analysis does not assume that stressed selbst is itself a ‘focus particle’. (6.27) Nur der Ko¨nig selbst warf einen Groschen in die Bu¨chse. Only the king himself threw a coin into the box In (6.27) the focus on (adnominal) selbst1 raises alternative functions. In an example involving a high oYcial like der Ko¨nig (¼ the king), standard alternatives might be the king’s subordinates. We could, for instance, deal with the functions {f1 :king ! chancellor, f2 :king ! first lord, f3 : king ! archbishop}. On the basis of these functions, the focus alternatives of the sentence will be the propositions {‘the chancellor threw a coin into the box’, ‘the Wrst lord threw a coin into the box’, ‘the archbishop threw a coin into the box’}. Operating on these alternative propositions, nur (‘only’) will make its common contribution: it is presupposed that the sentence is true (‘the king threw a coin into the box’), and it is asserted that no other of the alternatives is true. This analysis correctly predicts that the sentence does not essentially express surprise. We can even Wnd examples where both the basic fact and its exclusively holding true are unsurprising: (6.28) Nur der Ko¨nig selbst trug eine Krone (, natu¨rlich). ‘Only the king himself wore a crown (, of course).’ Hat contour patterns likewise give rise to uses of stressed selbst1 without any surprise eVect. I oVer an example here because hat contours do not make use of any function words like a particle, adverb, or quantiWer. They are therefore frequently mistaken as the common case of stressed selbst, making the case look less regular and perspicuous. Hat contour patterns (Bu¨ring 1996, 2003) are used to signal a partial answer to an overall global question (‘discourse topic’). The accent pattern allows us to reconstruct the overall question. The partial answer of this overall question signals a strategy to answer it ‘piecemeal’. The following (English) example illustrates the phenomenon, / and \ mark rising and falling accents. (6.29) The youngest/ brother wore red\ trousers
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The global question to address is, apparently, ‘which brother wore what colour of trousers?’ and the speaker signals that he will address this topic brother by brother, giving for each of them the colour of his trousers. While it would lead us too far to recapitulate how this signalling can be modelled in discourse semantics (see Bu¨ring 2003), let us take notice that the same pattern can be applied to selbst1 : (6.30)
(The archbishop was easy to spot, due to his mitre. The lords wore shining helmets . . . ) Der Ko¨nig selbst/ trug eine krone\. The king himself wore a crown
The rising accent on selbst1 signals that the topic ‘what did the congregation wear on their head?’ will be addressed under the conception that the king is the central member of the congregation who are accessed via functions that relate the king to his entourage. Hat contours are not interpreted with reference to any scales of surprise, strikingness, or likelihood, and you will see that example (6.30) intuitively conforms with this prediction. Yet there is a kind of focus construction which has the function of expressing surprise, namely emphatic focus. We have seen emphatic focus at work before, in the discussion of the pragmatics of negative polarity items in Chapter 5. BrieXy, emphatic focus carries the presupposition that the asserted proposition is the most striking, surprising, improbable among the evoked alternatives. This presupposition is also exploited by stressed selbst. The overwhelming majority of examples that are discussed in the literature as ‘intensifying’ or ‘emphatic’ selbst1 are in fact selbst1 in emphatic focus. Relying on the analysis of emphatic focus that was presented in the prevoius chapter, we can immediately go through an example: (6.31) Der Ko¨nig selbstf hat die Tu¨re geo¨Vnet. The king himself has the door opened Salient focus alternatives of selbst in that case could be something like (6.32): (6.32) Focus alternatives of selbst in given context: ½½selbstf f ¼ { g j g maps king onto some person in the service of the king } The phrase der Ko¨nig selbst denotes the same thing as der Ko¨nig, which is what is stated in (6.33): (6.33) ½½ der Ko¨nig selbstf o ¼ Id(king) ¼ king
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The induced set of alternative individuals will hence be something like the set in (6.34a): (6.34) a. Induced set of alternative individuals ½½ der Ko¨nig selbstf f ¼ {x j x ¼ g(king) for some g 2 ½½selbstf f } ¼ { king, queen, butler, cook, . . . } The sentence makes the assertion ‘the king opened the door’.11 (6.34) b. Assertion ½½ der Ko¨nig selbstf hat die Tu¨re geo¨Vnet o ¼ OPEN(king, door) The interesting part, however, is of course the presupposition of the sentence, what is ‘also understood’, namely that there is an entourage of the king (¼ the set of induced alternative individuals) and that we’d have been less surprised if one of those had opened the door. This is given in (6.34d), with the intermediate step in (6.34c). (6.34) c. ½½ der Ko¨nig selbstf hat die Tu¨re geo¨Vnet f ¼ { OPEN(g(king), door) j g 2 ½½selbstf f } ¼ {‘the queen opened the door’, ‘the butler opened the door’, ‘the cook opened the door’, . . . } (6.34) d. presupposition 8p 2 { OPEN(g(king), door) j g 2 ½½selbstf f }: OPEN(g(king), door) < p. ‘For all alternatives of the king, it would have been less striking if one of them had opened the door’ ¼ ‘It would have been less surprising, had the queen opened the door’, ‘It would have been less surprising, had the butler opened the door’, ‘It would have been less surprising, had the cook opened the door’, . . . This example illustrates all factors in the interpretation of intensifying selbst and their interaction. We can now proceed to see how these factors, including the lexical meaning of selbst, had to change in order to come to the focus 11
Instead of burdening the representation with a treatment of the deWnite description ‘die Tu¨re’ (‘the door’), I will treat it—like ‘the king’—in a namelike fashion (which is, perhaps, a bit more excusable for kings than for doors).
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particle use of selbst (‘even’). Before doing this, however, I will end this section with an illustration of adverbial use of selbst in order to complete the picture developed so far. The core meaning is the same as in the adnominal case, yet presented so as to be packaged with the verb phrase. einen Witz erza¨hlt. (6.35) Der Ko¨nig hat selbstf the king has himself a joke told ‘The king has told a joke himself.’ (6.36) ½½selbstadv o ¼ lP(e,(e,t) ) lelx.( P(e, Id(x))) This term can be paraphrased as ‘I am waiting for a relation P between individual x and event e ( the verb phrase meaning), and I state that, given that the individual x is known, x-itself was involved in the P-event e’. Alternatives to type-lifted selbstadv are type-lifted versions of the corresponding functions. Once we see them, the core contribution again becomes transparent: (6.37) Alt(½½selbstadv o ) ¼ {llP(e,(e,t)) lelx.( P(e, cook-of(x))), lP(e,(e,t) ) lelx.( P(e, butler-of(x))), lP(e,(e,t) ) lelx.( P(e, wifeof(x))), . . . } These—very abstract—alternatives can be paraphrased as ‘subject’s cook VPed’, ‘subject’s butler VP-ed’, ‘subject’s wife VP-ed’, etc. In combination with the actual verb phrase (here: ‘tell a joke’) and subject (‘the king’) we will get once more the well-known set of focus alternative propositions (‘the king’s cook told a joke’, ‘the king’s butler told a joke’, ‘the king’s wife told a joke’) which oVer the basis for focus sensitive words or constructions to contribute their meaning. The adverbial variants of intensifying selbst are of obvious interest for the grammaticalization of English -self to a reXexive pronoun. Remember the loss of emphatic focusing in the ne pas case in French. Recent Wndings in Keenan (2002, 2003) with respect to the use of PRO-self in English suggest that the English intensiWer underwent a similar development. English PRO-self was used indiscriminatingly to signal a person of high rank (kings, pope, God, Jesus, etc.). While the fact that kings, popes, God, or Jesus always come with some kind of entourage is part of common knowledge, not all the uses of self that Keenan reports would license some sensible emphatic statement on the basis of the standard entourages. For instance, the statement in question sometimes simply is not very striking, either in itself or with regard to a contrast between centre and periphery. The resulting sentence was an ordinary sentence about a person of high rank. Hence, in English, we see -self passing
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through a stage of formulaic use (‘the king, behold!’) until speakers saw a new regularity for its use, namely as the well-known signal for a local antecedent of an anaphor. An analysis of this part of English language history could serve to reWne Levinson’s insightful treatment of the case (Levinson 2000). For the time, however, I will restrict attention to the German case. The superWcially simple and natural shift from selbst1 to selbst2 will turn out as an intricate redistribution of semantic labour in the sentence from which the participating word emerges with quite substantial changes.
6.4 From IntensiWer to Focus Particle The data presented in section 6.2 suggest that selbst/self was reanalysed as selbst/even in utterance contexts where it served to express some universal statement via a superlative. I will base my discussion on the made-up sentence (6.38). It is similar to the above real quotes in that (a) the beauty of ‘Adele’ is unsurpassed, and this is asserted by (b) comparing her in beauty to Venus, the mythological core of the set of those who exhibit beauty to some degree.12 (6.38) Venus selbst ist nicht scho¨ner als Adele. Venus selbst is not more-beautiful than Adele Let us Wrst recapitulate the meaning of (6.38) if we interpret selbst as selbst1 . Intensifying selbst will be focused, and in the present kind of example, this will be an emphatic focusing. Selbst will raise focus alternatives of the following kind: (6.39) ½½selbstf f ¼ { g j g maps Venus to some other woman or goddess who exhibits beauty} The literal content of sentence (6.38) can be computed by combining the predicate ‘more beautiful than’ with object NP and negation. The meaning ½½selbsto , i.e. the identity function Id, will be applied to ½½Venuso, yielding the individual concept ‘Venus’ again. Combining ‘Venus’ with the rest of the sentence will, as expected, result in the following proposition:13 (6.40) :More-Beautiful( Venus, Adele ) 12 Make sure to read (6.38) without a hat contour. The meaning of ‘Venus SELBST/ ist NICHT\ scho¨ner als Adele’ (Venus herSELF/ is NOT\ more beautiful than A.) is radically diVerent. 13 This simpliWed version does not do justice to the lexical meaning of beautiful in combination with the comparative more. A proper analysis of comparisons can be found in Stechow (1984), Bierwisch et al. (1984), Bierwisch (1987, 1989), see also Chapter 3.
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The focus alternatives at the propositional level are the following: (6.41) { :More-Beautiful( g(Venus), Adele ) j g 2 ½½ selbstf f } ¼ { :More-Beautiful( Susan, Adele ), :More-Beautiful( Soraya, Adele ), :More-Beautiful( Madonna, Adele ), :More-Beautiful( Nofretete, Adele ), . . . } where ‘Susan’, ‘Soraya’, ‘Madonna’, ‘Nofretete’, etc. are the entourage of ‘Venus’ or, as we called them in the previous section, the induced alternatives in the set of individuals. (6.42) Induced alternatives: { g(Venus) j g 2 ½½ selbstf f } ¼ {Susan, Soraya, Madonna, Nofretete, . . . } Remember that emphatic focus presupposes that the proposition expressed by the sentence (‘Venus is not more beautiful than Adele’) is the least likely or most striking one among these alternatives. This makes good sense, given Venus’ mythological status. (6.43)
Presupposed: For all p in Alt(Venus selbstf ist nicht scho¨ner als Adele): p is less striking than ½½ Venus ist nicht sch¨oner als Adeleo
Let us now consider the pragmatic inferences supported in such a scenario. Sentence (6.38) asserts that Adele is at least as beautiful as Venus, and presupposes that this is less likely than that Adele equals the beauty of any other woman. However, we know and understand even more. We understand that there is a partial ordering of women with respect to their beauty, and that Venus is maximally beautiful—according to Greek myths. Therefore, Adele is least likely to rival Venus in beauty (because Venus marks the top endpoint on the scale of beauty) and it follows that Adele must be more beautiful than any other woman (for the same reason). In other words: all focus alternative propositions hold true as well. (6.44) Inferred: :More-Beautiful( Susan, Adele ) is true :More-Beautiful( Soraya, Adele ) is true :More-Beautiful( Madonna, Adele ) is true etc. . . . This seems trivial, but remember that not all uses of selbst1 have to be additive. The phrasal uses of selbst1 in superlatives, in contrast, all have in
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common that they are additive. This aspect was reanalysed as part of the literal meaning of the target item selbst/even. At the crucial period, speakers saw that the semantic ingredients in (6.39) could be slightly altered and reorganized such that the same net information was computed in a diVerent manner. This is how reanalysis proceeded. First, the set of inferred alternatives in (6.42) could likewise arise as the set of regular focus alternatives of ‘Venus’, ½½Venus f o . In that case, however, the alternative women would not form the periphery of ‘Venus’ (evoked by the focus on selbst under the previous analysis) but be simple alternatives. (6.45) ½½ Venusf o ¼ {Susan, Soraya, Madonna, Nofretete, . . . } Second, if we compute the focus alternatives of the full sentence on basis of the assumption that ‘Venus’ was in focus, we will end up again with the propositions in (6.46). (6.46)
½½ Venusf ist nicht scho¨ner als Adelef ¼ { :More-Beautiful( Susan, Adele ), :More-Beautiful( Soraya, Adele ), :More-Beautiful( Madonna, Adele ), :More-Beautiful( Nofretete, Adele ), . . . }
Having come so far, all we need would be some part of the sentence that could turn these alternatives into the presuppositions we vaguely understood. It is most striking that the sentence holds true, and all other alternatives hold true as well. Luckily, we also have a spare word available: selbst. It has not so far entered into the interpretation, and it makes sense to assume that it is somehow responsible for the presuppositions. If we solve the semantic equation for this unknown item ½½ selbst ¼ x, it will be attributed the supposed meaning in (6.47): (6.47) selbst combines with a sentence S, containing a focus. ½½ selbst S o asserts: ½½ S o presupposes: (i) All p in ½½ S f hold true (ii) All p in ½½ S f are more likely, less striking, than ½½ S o . This is in fact the currently accepted analysis of selbst2 as reported in section 6.3. Speakers/readers in the middle of the seventeenth century who encountered ambivalent uses of selbst—like those shown earlier—felt invited to hypothesize a new lexical entry. Ambivalent uses diVered from earlier uses
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of selbst in two respects. First, the locus of focus under the most plausible analysis was diVerent from the older analysis of a sentence like (6.38). In terms of prosody, speakers had to ignore a stress on selbst and hypothesize a stress on the associating term—in our case, Venus. But it seems legitimate to assume this kind of ‘error’, given that prosodic patterns are not always easy to perceive and can be mispronounced. (I do not exploit the fact that most of my instances of doubtful selbst1 occurred in poems where natural accenting patterns are overruled by metre.) The second change in comparison to the old interpretation of sentence (6.38) concerns the set of alternatives: the new analysis does not conceptualize the alternatives as divided into core and periphery. As soon as we derive focus alternatives of Venus without any detour into the realm of functions, the set of alternatives is unstructured. In this respect, we see a loss of presupposition. Once a speaker/hearer hypothesized that others might use selbst in this new sense, the resulting focus particle selbst2 was ready to become part of German. In particular, it could associate with any focused element in the sentence (association need no longer be restricted to individuals and objects). There was no accent on selbst2 (because it was not required to be in focus). There was an accent on the associating element (because selbst2 associates with focus). The centrality eVects disappeared as soon as no functions were focused, but all uses would come with an additive presupposition (6.47i) and a scalar presupposition (6.47ii). The restrictions on the syntactic relation between focus particle and focus were determined in analogy to the syntactic behaviour of other focus particles in German at the time (e.g. nur ¼ ‘only’). This shows that all six diVerences between selbst/self and selbst/even that were listed in section 6.1 follow automatically from the reanalysis. The development of selbst has repercussions on our understanding of meaning change in reanalysis. Semantic reanalysis involves more than simply a loss of meaning at one end (‘bleaching’) plus a gain in meaning at the other end (‘pragmatic strengthening’). Let us reconsider the case in terms of bleaching and strengthening. At the level of sentence meaning of sentences S that contain either selbst/self or selbst/even, the reader may justly diagnose that meaning elements get lost, and other meaning elements come in. Consulting the table in section 7.1, we note that the centrality eVects of sentences with selbst1 got lost for sentences with selbst2 . On the other hand, sentences with selbst2 have a narrower, more speciWc meaning in that they are (a) always used additively and (b) always with a scale of surprise. Yet these losses and gains at the sentence level come about by the interplay of a changed locus of focusing and a new literal sense for the word selbst. What happens to the word itself? Does it gain, lose, or shift meaning?
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I proposed, following Moravcik (1972), that selbst1 denotes the identity function Id on the domain of individuals and objects. This is a maximally pale meaning and it is hard to imagine any further bleaching of the meaning of selbst1 . And indeed, the loss of centrality eVects came about primarily by a shift of focusing rather than by redeWning the meaning of any word. On the plus side, selbst did take over (a) the scalar presupposition, formerly contributed by emphatic focusing, and (b) additivity, a truly contextual implication. The latter component might be felicitously described as ‘pragmatic strengthening’. The origin of the Wrst contribution of selbst2 , however, is better characterized as ‘taking over the job of another meaningful component of the older construction—emphasis—which was no longer an understood part of the sentence’. While emphasis as a meaningful component of a sentence would presumably be classed as ‘pragmatic’ by some authors, note that it is nevertheless diVerent in nature from pragmatic inferences: pragmatic inferences can be withdrawn, but emphasis can at best be overheard or corrected, but not overwritten. Hence, reanalysis of a sentence is a redistribution of semantic labour between the participating words and other factors that contribute to meaning. Solving the semantic equation can possibly result in completely new meaning assignments for some participating word or construction. I want to end this section with an example. Let us take one of the earliest ambivalent uses of selbst and see what the present analyses of selbst1 and selbst2 have to say here. (6.15) Man kan es ist nicht ohn ein blut begierig Thier Gewo¨hnen daß es spiel vnd nieder knie vor dir Man kan waß noch viel mehr die starcke Xut vmbkehren. Den stro¨men widerstehn den tollen wellen wehren. Man da¨mpVt der Xammen macht man segelt gegen wind Man stu¨rtz’t die felsen hin wo tha¨l vnd ho¨len sind. ‘One can, it’s not easy, a bloodthirsty animal train so that it will play and kneel down before you One can, which is even more, reverse the strong Xood resist the streams, restrain the wild waves One damps the mighty Xames, one sails against the winds One throws boulders where there are valleys and caverns’ Man kan die steine selbst mit weitzen u¨berziehen. one can the stones ‘selbst’ with wheat cover ‘One can cover the stones ‘selbst’ (themselves/even?) with wheat.’ The selbst use is marked in boldface. The diagnosis is as follows. Prosodically, selbst does indeed carry accent, following the metre of the poem. This would support an analysis in terms of intensifying selbst1 . On the other hand,
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prosody in poems is not driven by pragmatics but by metre, and hence the accent might not be telling. If selbst were used as intensifying selbst1 , we would have to specify in what kind of focus. Given that no particles (‘only’, ‘also’, . . . ) or other focus sensitive operators are in sight, and given that a hat contour is not licensed by the context,14 we are left with the possibility of emphatic focus. Syntactically, selbst would be in an appropriate position to associate with die steine (‘the stones). Yet, intensifying selbst requires some relation between ‘stones’ and their entourage. The context mentions ‘bloodthirsty animals’, ‘Xoods’, ‘streams’, ‘high waves’, ‘Wre’, ‘opposing winds’, ‘valleys’, and ‘caverns’. While these all Wt in the category of ‘obstacle’, the stones in the crucial sentence are not presented as an obstacle. The goal that can (‘even’) be achieved is this: ‘to cover stones with wheat’, which means that the obstacle at issue is ‘need for food’. The remedy is expressed by the entire sentence. The task described is extremal on the scale of ‘circumventing obstacles’, which is both plausible and easy to understand for the reader. However, it is implausible to accommodate a suitable core–periphery structure for the older sense of selbst. The same task arises for the English version One can cover the stones themselves with wheat. Reading this sentence, one feels compelled to ask ‘the stones rather than what else?’ To make things worse, none of the other objects in this context—‘Wre’, ‘Xood’, and so on—is something that one could cover with wheat well. Had readers an alternative option to interpret this passage? They must have understood that the poem lists a number of dangerous obstacles and ways to overcome them. These were ordered according to diYculty. The last sentence conveys the most diYcult task, the one that is least likely to be achieved. It asserts that even this task can be accomplished. Formally speaking, the contextual alternatives arise by variation at the sentence level, not by variation in the subject NP (‘the stones’). In terms of focusing, this corresponds to focus projection to the sentence level, not a narrow focus on the subject NP. Older selbst1, however, can only evoke variation in individuals, not variation of all sentence material. The rhetorical structure of the poem will therefore match well with the purported meaning contribution of selbst/even, better so than with a semantic analysis in terms of traditional selbst/self. It is hard to decide whether the original authors saw the possibility of reanalysing selbst, if these passages—in other words—constitute deliberate 14
The sentence does not function as a partial answer to a global question suggested as the discourse topic. The reader may check for herself the eVect of diVerent ways to place a rise–fall accent pattern on the sentence, and verify that the context supplies no global question for any of them.
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creative uses of language, or whether authors, struggling for the right word, used selbst constructions in a phrasal manner to make some kind of additive-cumsuperlative statement. The fact that over-liberal uses of selbst occur in poetry with higher frequency than in prose suggests that the bounded form may have forced a less careful use of constructions than free prose. Yet there might also be an indirect correlation between certain types of poetry, emotional and emphatic contents, and the wish to encapsulate the information about emphasis/strikingness in a word rather than transporting it at the more fallible level of prosody. In other words, the case of selbst might as well be an instance of subjectiWcation (Traugott and Dasher 2002). Such questions should be settled in a complementary in-depth literary study, and clearer facts about the proportion of unvolitional creativity to deliberate innovation would contribute invaluably to our understanding of the nature of language faculty.
6.5 Summary In the present chapter, I investigated the emergence of German selbst/even from the older intensiWer selbst/self by reanalysis. It was frequently observed in the literature that certain uses of either word/reading oVer minimal pairs like the following, where the overall content of the two sentences is very similar: (6.49) Venus selbst war nicht scho¨ner als Adele ‘Venus herself was not more beautiful than Adele.’ (6.50) Selbst Venus war nicht scho¨ner als Adele ‘Even Venus was not more beautiful than Adele’. The existence of such minimal pairs has so far been taken as a suYcient and satisfying explanation of the change in question. I undertook it to trace the semantic reanalysis in detail, based on semantic analyses of both older and newer selbst which are, Wrst of all, synchronically adequate. This also allows us to get a clearer understanding of the nature of utterances that support reanalysis. In section 6.2 I reported corpus research in PG of texts between 1600 and 1730 with complementing samples from the preceding hundred years. This search showed that uses of selbst/self as in (6.49) were common over the entire period (and presumably even earlier) and still, unambiguous uses of selbst/even emerged only after 1700. As in the case of going to future in the previous chapter, this raises the question whether it is possible to locate onset contexts/uses of selbst in the seventeenth century which initiated the process of change, a process that had been possible for centuries before. Such onset contexts might be called ‘historical accident’ in a simpler picture and, as it turned out, coincidental they were indeed. Nevertheless it was
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elucidating to verify what such an ‘accident’ looks like. The PG corpus contained a considerable number of uses of selbst/self mainly in the second half of the seventeenth century that were characteristic in the following ways: .
. .
an additive statement was made by using selbst/self in a suitable superlative construction (frequently making reference to a certain humanistic background in that the background of comparison was provided by Greek and Roman mythology); the use of selbst/self was not very well supported pragmatically or could only be licensed by costly extra accommodations and assumptions; while an alternative analysis in terms of selbst/even was viable and yielded an intuitively reasonable result in a less costly manner.
In section 6.3 I developed semantic analyses for selbst/even and selbst/self that explicate these intuitions. While selbst2 was analysed as a focus particle in analogy to the proposal of Rooth (1992) for English even, the intensiWer required a more intricate treatment. I proposed that it denotes the identity function and only contributes to the sentence content as soon as it is in focus (‘stressed selbst’). The nature of its focus alternatives—alternative functions— is responsible for centrality eVects while the exact semantic contribution of focusing will—as usual—depend on the operator, particle, or other construction that makes semantic use of focus alternatives. The conceptual nature of possible instantiations of the core–periphery structure could only be vaguely paraphrased, generalizing over prominent known examples. While previous investigations usually contribute to positive lists of attested core–periphery structures, our own historical investigation indirectly contributed to research in oVering attestedly illegitimate instances of core–periphery structure. The above-mentioned intuition that certain common uses of selbst between 1624 and 1667 had poor pragmatic support could be made precise in terms of the lack of a suitable instantiation of core–periphery. These pieces were put together in the account of the reanalysis of selbst sentences in section 6.4. The analysis revealed that minimal changes in the overall semantic and pragmatic content of selbst sentences were brought about by a considerable reorganization of the semantic composition, including a relocation of focus and a new interpretation of selbst. The analysis could also do justice to the ambivalent uses in section 6.2. In more detail: (a) all crucial uses were reliably additive—which was taken up by selbst/ even after reanalysis as an additivity presupposition; (b) the contexts did not support a suitable core–periphery structure, thus discouraging a focus on (intensifying) selbst;
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(c) the contexts did support alternatives, though, hence suggesting a focus on some suitable constituent in the sentence; (d) all onset contexts used emphatic focus. The contribution of emphatic focus was taken over by the newly emerging selbst/even. I set aside the syntactic side of the development. At the time of reanalysis, the positions of focus particles in sentences were still comparatively free in German and the syntax of emerging selbst/even eventually appears to have been restricted in analogy to other focus particles in (Early) Modern High German. Another question likewise has to be left for future research: While formal analysis and empirical Wndings complement each other in the eventual account of the change, the resulting theory is open as to whether the eventual change occurred through a volitional act of creative language use or as a byproduct of the need to subject language to the limits set by verse. In the case of selbst the change apparently occurred in a very educated, very language conscious part of the speaker community where a certain degree of free creativity is certainly plausible. In the next chapter, however, we will see another case of language change which should be classed as ‘misunderstanding’ rather than a creative act of linguistic innovation.
7 To Be or Not to Be a Determiner 7.1 Introduction Each of the preceding case studies rested on existing results in synchronic semantic theory which could, in combination with detailed knowledge about language use in some crucial period, be exploited to develop an account for a given instance of language change. The present chapter takes a slightly diVerent perspective. It is devoted to the investigation of the origin and meaning of a determiner(like) word in Modern German, lauter ( ‘only’, ‘many’). This item has so far not received much attention in linguistic theorizing even though—as soon will become clear—its grammar and meaning are peculiar enough. An appropriate synchronic analysis will be derived on the basis of the historical facts about the emergence of the item in question: diachrony feeds synchrony. We will see how several striking peculiarities in the synchronic behaviour of the word lauter will follow straightforwardly as soon as we take the origin of the word seriously. The organization of the present chapter will diVer from the previous chapters in order to reXect how diachronic exploration feeds synchronic analysis. In the next section, I will lay out the grammar and uses of lauter in Modern High German and point out some striking peculiarities. Section 7.3 will lead us back in history and trace the origin of the word in its modern use. In section 7.4 I will propose an analysis of the development that leads us straightforwardly to the present meaning(s) of lauter. This historically motivated semantic representation of modern lauter will be tested extensively against current language use. It will correctly predict the empirical facts about lauter that were presented in section 7.2 and moreover receive additional support from more subtle tendencies in the use of lauter. Section 7.5 will summarize the development.
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7.2 A Peculiar Determiner The word lauter derives from an older adjective with the meaning ‘pure, unpolluted, shining’. This source adjective is still part of the passive grammar of contemporary speakers of German who would understand, but not utter, sentences like (7.1): (7.1) Aus der Quelle Xoss lauter(es) Wasser. (obs.) From the spring Xowed pure water This adjectival use of lauter, like all other adjectives in Modern High German, requires obligatory adjectival inXection. Yet those sources for uses of ‘lauter’ that are most accessible for the present-day reader date from a period when adjectival inXection was facultative—hence the brackets in example (7.1). However, lauter is still part of Modern German in a slightly diVerent sense and with a diVerent syntactical behaviour. The following three examples illustrate this.1 (7.2) Die Maiers haben lauter To¨chter. the Maier-family have only daughters (7.3) (after a day of Wshing) Ich habe keine Forellen, ich hab heute lauter Welse I have no trouts I have today only catWsh geangelt caught ‘I didn’t catch any trout, I caught only catWsh.’ (7.4) Unter dem Baum wachsen lauter Hallimasche under the tree grow a-lot-of honey-fungi The English translations suggest that lauter has developed two readings that roughly match with English ‘many’/‘much’ and the particle ‘only’. The translation in the ‘only’ sense requires a slight reWnement: lauter always carries a meaning component of ‘being many’. One cannot use (7.2) in a situation where the Maier family has one or two daughters but from three on, it would be appropriate. Likewise (7.3) conveys that the speaker has caught an agreeably large number of catWsh and not just one or two. A faithful translation of
1
Some German colleagues suggested that the word belonged to the southern dialects rather than the north. Pilot surveys in mixed groups of native speakers of German, however, showed no conclusive results.
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(7.2) might hence be ‘The Maier family have only daughters, and a fair number of them at that’; and likewise for (7.3). The syntactic distribution of lauter patterns with other determiners. More speciWcally, lauter plus a nominal expression of any complexity yields something with the distribution of a noun phrase: (7.5)
Hans besitzt [ lauter [u¨berXu¨ssige alte blaue Stu¨hle, die man wegwerfen sollte]N ’] ‘Hans owns lauter superXuous old blue chairs which one should cast away.’
Moreover, lauter does not allow any further determiner to its left: (7.6) *die lauter PWVerlinge, *einige lauter PWVerlinge the lauter chanterelles some lauter chanterelles In this respect, it contrasts with adjectives as well as with other determiners with adjectival properties: (7.7) die the die the
vielen many leckeren tasty
PWVerlinge, einige wenige PWVerlinge, chanterelles some few chanterelles PWVerlinge chanterelles
Likewise, lauter does not allow any determiner-like items to its right. In this point, it contrasts with other determiners as shown by (7.9) as well as with classical focus particles, notably nur (‘only’) and bloß (‘barely’), exempliWed in (7.10): (7.8) *lauter die Morchel, *lauter zwei Morchel lauter the morels lauter two morels (7.9) all die, die zwei, alle drei Morchel all the the two all three morels (7.10) bloß die Morchel, nur die Morchel ‘barely/only the morels’ Finally lauter, in spite of my translation as English ‘only’, does not pattern with focus particles. Most importantly, it cannot occur in adverbial positions in the sentence. (7.11) illustrates focus particles in a preverbal position (in association with the verb) where lauter is not possible. (7.11) Hans hat nur/ bloß/ *lauter geschlafen Hans has only barely lauter slept
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Hence, in terms of syntactic distributation lauter behaves as much like a determiner as could be. For expository reasons, I will start by turning these apparently simple Wndings into apparently straightforward semantic representations of the two readings of lauter. These representations, based on superWcial synchronic evidence, will however quickly turn out to be too simplistic. Empirically, modern lauter is ‘like many/only but diVerent’. The eventual semantic analysis, motivated by historical facts, will demonstrate that the surface impression of ‘being slightly diVerent’ is not hopelessly beyond reach—yet the semantic representation will, surprisingly, have to be not just slightly, but completely diVerent from our Wrst try.2 Starting from examples (7.2) and (7.3), we might hypothesize that lauter, at least in one reading, expresses a universal quantiWcation. In order to remind the reader of some common universal determiners, I Wrst repeat the semantic analysis of sentence (7.12), making use of the universal determiner alle (¼‘all’). (7.12)
a. Alle PWVerlinge sind im Korb all chanterelles are in- the basket b. ½½alle ¼ lPlQ. 8x ( P(x) ! Q(x)) c. ½½alle Pfifferlinge ¼ lQ. 8x ( Chanterelle(x) ! Q(x) ) d. ½½alle Pfifferlinge sind im Korb ¼ 8x ( Chanterelle(x) ! In-Basket(x))
The example nicely shows the common structure of quantifying determiners: the determiner expresses quantiWcation over a given set (here: chanterelles). This set (also called the restrictor) is commonly described by the content of the noun while the verbal part of the sentence tells us ‘what is the case’ with the respective proportion of that given set (here: they are in the basket). The latter part is also called the nuclear scope of the quantiWer.3 If we start with the assumption that lauter (‘only’) denotes a universal quantiWer, we will immediately notice that its arguments are organized in a diVerent way. Take derivation (7.13) as an example. It oVers the putative analysis of the sentence lauter Reitzker sind im Korb. Note that the representation uses
2 In typological classiWcation, there is always the danger of classing things together that yield similar overall meanings. Given that lauter, which looks like a determiner, will turn out to be something completely diVerent, the present exercise can also be taken as a warning against too hasty grammatical labelling. 3 The reader may object that it is not always the VP that contributes the nuclear scope. An easy counterexample is ‘Tom ate every mushroom.’ Commonly I use the term ‘the rest of the sentence’ to refer to that part of the sentence that will in the eventual analysis contribute the nuclear scope. To facilitate reading, however, I made the present passage strictly match our simple example.
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the quantiWer Many. I will not discuss the context-dependent nature of ‘many’ (while Wve milk caps in a basket may constitute a sizeable quantity of mushrooms, Wve grass stems are certainly not enough to refer to them as lauter Gras) but refer the reader to the literature that treats this phenomenon (e.g. Partee 1989). (7.13) a. Lauter Reitzker sind im Korb lauter saVron-milk-caps are in-the basket ‘There are only saVron milk caps in the basket, and a fair number of them at that’ b. ½½lauter ¼ lQlP. 8x ( P(x) ! Q(x) ) ^ Many x (Q(x) ^ P(x) ) c. ½½lauter Reitzker ¼ lP. 8x ( P(x) ! Milk-Cap(x) ) ^ Many x (Milk-Cap(x) ^ P(x) ) d. ½½sind im Korb ¼ lx.In-Basket(x) e. ½½lauter Reitzker sind im Korb ¼ 8x ( In-Basket(x) ! Milk-Cap(x) ) ^ Many x (Milk-Cap(x) ^ In-Basket(x) ) What about the asymmetry between the universal quantiWers in (7.12) and (7.13)? In contrast to (7.12), the set over which we quantify in (7.13) is determined by the verb phrase (‘what is in the basket’). The noun describes what is the case with an appropriate proportion of elements in this set (‘are milk caps’) and lauter contributes the universal quantiWcation (‘all of them are milk caps’). This seems to be an odd way for a determiner to manage its two arguments and indeed was claimed to be universally impossible. We will come back to this point. Let us now turn to the ‘many’ uses of lauter as exempliWed once more in example (7.14): (7.14) Unter dem Baum wachsen lauter Steinpilze under the tree grow a- lot-of penny-bun-bolets ‘Under the tree, there grow a lot of penny bun bolets.’ This sentence can describe the vegetal situation under a tree if a lot of penny bun bolets grow there, even if other plants, perhaps even other mushrooms of less interesting kinds, grow there as well. The ‘only’ component has entirely vanished in that use, leaving the ‘strikingly many’ component. Hence, it seems appropriate to claim that lauter is synonymous to English many or German viele in one of its readings. (7.15) lQlP. Many x(Q(x) ^ P(x) )
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With (7.13) and (7.15) we have two simple analyses for the two readings of modern German lauter. I will now show that they are wrong. The Wrst peculiar fact about lauter is the stranding prohibition. German allows for the possibility of topicalizing nouns of a full noun phrase, leaving the determiner at the basic position of the NP. (7.16) illustrates the construction. The translations into English reXect the information structure of the German construction. (7.16) Parasolpilzei haben wir einige ti gefunden. Parasols have we some found ‘As for parasols, we found some (of these).’ fanden wir fu¨nf ti Reitzkeri Milk-caps found we Wve ‘As for milk caps, we found Wve (of these).’ While all speakers (and oYcial grammars) Wnd this construction acceptable for weak determiners like ‘einige’ (some), ‘fu¨nf ’ (Wve), many speakers also accept strong determiners like alle (¼ ‘all’) in appropriate contexts:4 (7.17) Syntaxbu¨cher haben wir alle gelesen, aber Semantikbu¨cher books-on-syntax have we all read, but books-on- semantics nur die Ha¨lfte. only the half ‘As for books on syntax, we read all of them, but of the books on semantics, we read only one half.’ Stranding is allowed for determiners that mean ‘many’, ‘much’. German has several of them. (7.18) Steinpilze haben wir viele/ haufenweise/ massig penny-bun-bolets have we many in heaps in masses gefunden. found ‘(As for) penny bun bolets we found many.’ The interesting observation is that stranding sentences with lauter are judged ungrammatical by speakers. (7.19) *Steinpilze haben wir lauter gefunden Penny-bun-bolets have we lauter found The judgements are very coherent and uniform and are shared even by those speakers who would spontaneously paraphrase lauter as viele (‘many’) and 4
For the distinction between weak and strong quantiWers, see the original proposal in Milsark (1977), and the recent survey by de Hoop (1995), and references therein.
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deny the ‘only’ reading. The sentences are moreover judged as ‘downright bad’, not simply ‘marked’ or ‘questionable’. The star in (7.19) reXects a solid fact about the grammar of lauter.5 There are two simple potential explanations for the contrast between (7.18) and (7.19), yet neither of them is satisfactory. I report them nevertheless because they reXect recurrent reactions of colleagues to the above contrast. The Wrst one rests on a morphosyntactic argument. It was proposed in discussions (Josef Bayer, p.c.) that the ungrammaticality of (7.19) derives from the fact that lauter, unlike viel(e), does not show agreement with the noun. The hypothetical universal would be: ‘Only adjectives and determiners that show agreement with the noun allow stranding.’ However, this cannot be the full truth because the determiners haufenweise and massig do not inXect either. Still, they are allowed to strand (see (7.18) ). The case of massig is strikingly parallel to lauter. The word derives from the adjective massig which means ‘massive, bulky, voluminous’. If it is used uninXected as in (7.18), it simply means ‘a lot’ (hence the mushrooms in (7.18) need not be bulky, but they are numerous). Strikingly, this synonym of many allows stranding. Another uninXected determiner that allows stranding is ein paar (cognate to ‘a pair of ’, means: ‘some’): it is acceptable to assert that Steinpilze haben wir ein paar gefunden (‘as for penny bun bolets, we found some’) even though ein paar can never show case, number, or gender agreement. Therefore, the lack of inXection cannot be the reason for the unacceptability of (7.19). If we restrict attention to the ‘only’ reading of lauter for a moment, an explanation for the unacceptability of (7.19) can be derived on the basis of Bu¨ring (1997) and Krifka (1998). Sentences like (7.16) to (7.18) all evoke contrastive topics with an expectation for appropriate continuations. Yet a statement like (7.19) prohibits any structurally appropriate continuation. This can be seen more clearly if we look at examples with only or also: Steinpilze haben wir auch gefunden (‘Penny bun bolets we found, as well’) can reasonably be continued by ‘. . . and milk caps, too, and parasols as well’. In contrast, *Steinpilze haben wir nur gefunden (‘Penny bun bolets we found, only’) automatically answers all further questions about other kinds of mushrooms. The sentence settles the topic ‘how many exemplars did we Wnd of what sort of mushroom’ completely; contrastive topicalization is therefore prohibited. This could cover the ‘only’ reading of lauter. However, the stranding prohibition for the many reading of lauter is not predicted by this analysis.
5
I am grateful to Dirk Sale´schus who Wrst drew my attention to this fact.
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To summarize, we will have to accept the stranding prohibition as one of the many unforeseeable accidents and exceptions in grammar. This is not only extremely unsatisfying, it is also hardly plausible from a diachronic point of view. If lauter has meant ‘many’ since at least four hundred years ago, as the data survey in the next section will reveal, how can generations of speakers faithfully transmit a prohibition against using it in stranding constructions? How can a child ever understand that the lack of stranding constructions for lauter in its input is signiWcant while any lack of stranding constructions for massig is completely irrelevant? The stranding prohibition is hence a serious challenge for the analysis of lauter. The second disturbing fact concerns lauter in its ‘only’ reading. According to the semantic literature about nominal quantiWers, a determiner with this meaning should not exist. Keenan and Stavi (1986) deWne the property of ‘being conservative’ for generalized quantiWers and, after a comprehensive overview of natural language determiners, propose the Conservativity Constraint as a universal in (7.21): (7.20) Conservativity A quantiWer Q is called conservative if it obeys the following condition: For all sets A, B: Q(A, B) if and only if Q(A, A\B) (7.21) Keenan and Stavi’s Universal: All quantiWer denotations of determiners are conservative. (Keenan and Stavi 1986, from Hamm 1989: 7 V.) There is a very intuitive content to this abstract restriction. Quantifying determiners like ‘every’, ‘some’, ‘many’, etc. have the function of relating two properties. One is contributed by the noun, i.e. the sister constituent of the determiner. The other is contributed by the rest of the sentence. ‘Conservativity’ amounts to the prediction that the set quantiWed over is always the set contributed by the noun of the NP. It should never be the set contributed by the rest of the sentence. Slightly simpliWed, the noun phrase gives us what we are talking about, and the ‘rest of the sentence’ tells us something about it. The treatment of the ‘only’ reading of lauter in (7.13) violates Keenan and Stavi’s universal. Consider the sentence in (7.13). The Wrst argument of lauter is its sister noun, Reitzker (‘milk caps’), the second is sind im Korb (‘to be in the basket’). In order to verify the truth of its semantic representation in (7.13), we need to consider the set of ‘things in the basket’ that are not ‘milk caps’. If there are such things, the sentence is false, according to (7.13). Otherwise it is true. The universal in (7.21) however states that we should
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only have to look at the set of ‘milk caps’ and the set of ‘milk caps that are in the basket’ in order to evaluate the sentence. Hence the violation.6 This is certainly a surprising Wnding—yet, the question is: surprising for whom? Either the universal of Keenan and Stavi is falsiWed, or at least weakened to a statistical tendency. Or else, there is something wrong with the semantic analysis of lauter in its ‘only’ reading. We will keep the Violation of Conservativity on our agenda. The third peculiar observation about the use of lauter concerns the interaction of lauter with focus and negation. Under negation and in focus, the ‘many’ reading—even though the most prominent reading for a majority of speakers—vanishes entirely. Hence, while (7.22) has two readings, (7.23) and (7.24) are unambiguous. (7.22) Da sind lauter Bonbons auf dem Tisch! there are ‘lauter’ sweets on the table Reading 1: ‘there are only bonbons on the table (and quite a lot of them, at that)’ Reading 2: ‘there are a lot of bonbons on the table (aside from other stuV lying around)’ (7.23) Da sind nicht lauter Bonbons auf dem Tisch ( . . . es hat na¨mlich there are not ‘lauter’ sweets on the table there has namely auch Schokolade) also chocolate Reading 1: ‘There are not only bonbons on the table’ ( . . . in fact, there is also chocolate) no possible reading 2: *‘There are not many bonbons on the table’ * . . . sondern bloß zwei / . . . *in fact, there are just two of them (7.24) Da sind sogar lauter Bonbons auf dem Tisch there are even ‘lauter’ sweets on the table Reading 1: ‘there are even only bonbons on the table’ no possible reading 2: *‘there are even a lot of bonbons on the table’ These facts are subtle. There is a feeling about (7.23) and (7.24) that one would not use these sentences to express what they mean. This feeling is hard to pin down and does not reach the strength of an objection to bad style, wrong register, or even ungrammaticality. Still one would hesitate to make a case for any speciWc semantic analysis solely on the basis of examples like (7.22) to 6 Hamm (1989) oVers the same argumentation to show that only or nur should not be treated as determiners.
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(7.24). It will be all the more satisfying to see that the judgements, as well as the uneasy feeling, receive a natural explanation under the eventual analysis. I have now presented three observations that cast doubt on the simple preliminary semantic representations for lauter in (7.13) and (7.15). More data that bring out the subtleties of the ‘only’ reading will be discussed later in section 7.4. The next step in our quest for an appropriate semantic treamtent of lauter will consist in taking a closer look at the origins of lauter in its determiner-like use in the next section. This will take us back to German as it was spoken around 1500.
7.3 The Data The GDW lists a rich choice of uses of lauter; however it is very vague about the time at which determiner-like uses Wrst occur. We will soon see that this is not without reason. The GDW, in its entry on lauter, oVers very early quotes like (7.25) alongside comparably late ones like (7.26). (7.25) (ich habe) dich zu mir gezogen, aus lauter gu¨te. I have you to me drawn out-of ‘lauter’ mercy ‘I have drawn you towards me, out of pure mercy.’ (Nikolaus v. Jeroschin, mid 14th century) (7.26)
die gesellschaft war aus lauter solchen personen the party was from ‘lauter’ such persons zusammengesetzt, welche die vorrechte des vertrautesten put-together which the privileges of-the most-intimate umgangs in diesem hause genossen. acquaintance in this house enjoy ‘the party consisted purely/only of such persons who enjoyed the privileges of the most intimate acquaintance with this house’ (Wieland, c.1780)
A more recent source is the dictionary of Early Modern High German by Goebel and Reichmann (Wo¨rterbuch des Fru¨hneuhochdeutschen, 2001). They oVer the following early instances of lauter which they class as ‘only’ uses: (7.27) sieben gu¨lden die hett er bar, lauter erbettelt gelt fu¨rwar seven gulden those has he only ‘lauter’ begged money indeed ‘seven gulden, those he had, all/only/purely begged money indeed’ (Hans Sachs, 1563)
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(7.28) Es siehet nicht wol auß wenn ein Verß in lauter eynsylbigen it looks not well out if a verse in ‘lauter’ monosyllabic woertern bestehet words consists ‘it does not look well / if a verse consists only in monosyllabic words’ (Martin Opitz, 1624) I conducted a search in the major writings of Martin Luther between 1516 and 1535. The complete work is available in the Weimarer Ausgabe (Weimar edition, WA) which oVers an edition of all manuscripts and printed editions that are attributed to Luther. There is one aspect about this edition that makes it particularly fruitful for linguistic research: not all of ‘Luther’s writings’ were formulated by Luther himself. The WA includes notes of Luther’s oral presentations, taken by colleagues and students. In addition, many of Luther’s Latin sermons were translated into German by those who prepared publication in print, aiming at a readership who did not read Latin. Such translations did not change the theological content of the sermons and in that sense constitute a proper part of ‘Luther’s writings’. Linguistically speaking, however, they give us access to a variety of diVerent speakers at that time, presumably of a comparatively homogeneous background, not literary authors, and all writing on the same topics. A more practical aspect of this source material is that the German writings of Luther (himself) from 1516 to 1525 are accessible via the comprehensive electronic concordance at the University of Berkeley. The following results are based on electronic search in the Berkeley Concordance, complemented by manual search of the (translated) German sermons of the years 1524 to 1531. The Berlekey concordance oVers n ¼ 198 uses of uninXected lauter, lautter. The passages show a confusingly wide variety of uses of lauter which could be roughly grouped into the following seven types of examples (all quotes refer to WA (volume, page, line) ). Type 1 pure, clear, unmixed [n ¼ 51] (die Galater, die) so feyne, reyne, lautter Christen worden. the Galatians who so Wne pure ‘lauter’ Christians became (12, 148, 11) von lautter golde of ‘lauter’ gold ‘of pure gold’ (11, 433, 17)
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This is the traditional adjectival use. I counted examples where lauter either can be classed as an adjective for syntactic reasons (like the Wrst quote) or where the collocation in all likelihood patterns with the traditional adjectival use that we Wnd a long way back in German texts (like the second one). In fact, there are also rare uses of adjectival lauter that show adjectival inXection. The second kind of use is in collocation with nothing but . . . (nichts als . . . lauter N). I list it as a separate type of use because lauter visibly oscillates between ‘only’ and ‘pure’ here. Semantically, lauter seems to be redundant. As soon as we state that the soul expects only the mercy of God, it seems superXuous to assert that it also waits only for the pure mercy of God. Nevertheless, this use shows that lauter strongly tended into the ‘only’ direction. (You might recognize ‘pure mercy’ as a crucial factor in Luther’s theological thinking. Here, as elsewhere, he makes the point that paradise can alone be reached through the pure mercy of God and not, as the Catholic Church had it, because your good deeds, including donations, are weighed against your sins.) Type 2 nothing but merely, barely, purely . . . [n ¼ 8] also das sie nichts denn blos lauter Gottes gnaden wartet such that she nothing than only ‘lauter’ God’s mercy waits ‘such that she (¼ the soul) expects nothing other than barely and purely God’s mercy’ (18, 524, 10) The following uses show a formulaic way to express a reason or cause. The word lauter is used in a sense oscillating between ‘only’, ‘pure’, and ‘so much’. I list these examples as a separate case because this formula has survived to Modern High German, as exempliWed in (7.29). Furthermore I distinguish a use with positive connotations and a use with negative connotations because the latter motivate the negative adjective of Type 5 below. Type 3a [n ¼ 31]: aus lauter Gnad out-of pure mercy ... das er . . . aus lauter gnaden und barmhertzigkeit behalten that he out-of ‘lauter’ mercy and compassion keep werde would ‘that he . . . be kept for pure mercy and compassion’ (2, 100, 6)
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Type 3b ([n ¼ 22]) aus lauter out-of mere aus lauter out-of mere (8, 87, 20)
Triegerey deception gewallt und frevell brute-force and wickedness
(7.29) Er sieht den Wald vor lauter Ba¨umen nicht. (ModHG) he sees the woods for ‘lauter’ trees not ‘He does not see the wood for (the) ‘‘many’’ trees.’ Next, there are uses that are ambivalent between what might be modern lauter and the older ‘pure’ adjective. Again, they come with positive connotations (where ‘pure N’ is better than ‘N with something in addition’) and with negative connotations (where ‘pure N’ is worse than ‘N with at least some X in addition’). Type 4a: ambivalent, positive connotations [n ¼ 8] das es ja lauter gnade und nit ein lohn werde . . . that it prt. ‘lauter’ mercy and not a reward be ‘that it be purely mercy and not a reward’ (7, 573, 26) Type 4b: ambivalent, negative connotations [n ¼ 31] Es werden gewißlich lauter gleyssen, scheyn und triegerey it will(PL) certainly ‘lauter’ glistening, pretence and deception seyn . . . be ‘these will certainly just be glistening, shine, and deception’ (2, 758, 3) The negative connotations are lexiWed in a clearly adjectival use in the sense of English ‘mere’ (ModHG adjective bloß (-er, -e, -es) ). The word lauter occurs as a structurally unambiguous adjective, contributing that the property in question is not the best that one could have. Type 5: negative scalar, pejorative, like in ein bloßer Betru¨ger ¼ a mere swindler [n ¼ 25] so wurden sie Wnden, das ein lauter scheyn gewest . . . so would they Wnd, that a ‘lauter’ pretence was ‘so would they Wnd that it was merely pretence’ (2, 103, 9)
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In some cases, lauter tends towards adverbial uses, standing in positions that are clearly outside the noun phrase.7 Interestingly we Wnd both adverbial uses that generalize the lexical content of the original adjective to the domain of verbs (‘entirely’, Type 7) as well as rarer adverbial uses in the ‘only’ sense (Type 6). Type 6 adverbial like nur ¼ only [n ¼ 7] so wir gott lauter aus reinem geist on allen lon . . . suchen if we God ‘lauter’ from pure spirit without all reward seek if we seek God alone in pure spirit and without any reward (11, 475, 12) Type 7 adverbially in the sense of entirely [n ¼ 17] der . . . an ym selbs lauter verzagt who at him self ‘lauter’ despairs who despairs entirely (2, 248, 10) In addition, there were n ¼ 10 ambiguous uses and another four unidentiWable ones that are not included in these statistics. This puzzling collection oVers an impression of the oscillating and varied uses that were made of the word in the early sixteenth century. In particular uses of Type 4 motivate the vagueness in the judgements of etymological dictionaries when it comes to oVering Wrst uses of modern lauter: the modern reader will read lauter in its modern sense in many cases. Nevertheless, the examples might likewise have been written and understood in one of the earlier senses. Against the background of possible previous uses, we can conclude that indubitable instances of modern lauter need to show the following features: . . . .
they must occur in a noun phrase (excluding uses of Types 6 and 7); they must combine with a count noun in the plural and must not be interpreted in a distributive way (which together will exclude ‘pure’ uses of Types 1, 2, 3, and 4); they must not show a pejorative reading (excluding Type 5).
The made-up sentence in (7.30) exempliWes the crucial type of quote that we have to look for. (7.30) Das sind lauter Nu¨sse ‘These are lauter nuts’ Here, lauter is used with a count noun in the plural (Nu¨sse ¼ nuts). It should not denote ‘purity’ in a distributive sense, i.e. it is not the purity of each single nut that is at stake. And Wnally, lauter should be not used in the pejorative ‘mere’ sense. 7
In terms of DP syntax: outside the determiner phrase DP.
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A brief survey of possible contexts for lauter conWrms that these are also the only unambiguous uses of modern lauter: if the noun were a singular mass noun, modern lauter could not be distinguished from the adjective ‘pure’. If the noun were a singular count noun, modern lauter would not apply. Mass nouns in the plural are rare and, anyway, the older notion of ‘purity’ would once more apply. Finally, the pejorative adjectival use of lauter that is exhibited unambiguously in Type 5 was possible for plural count nouns: (7.31) die unreinen the impure denn lautter than mere (WA 7, 556, 25
und vorkereten and false nieszlinge ‘advantage-takers’ f.)
liebhaber, wilche nit mehr lovers who not more sein . . . are
Syntactically speaking this passage clearly matches modern lauter. In terms of semantics, however, we have a (now obsolete) Type 5 use: The passage contrasts N (nieszlinge ¼ people who only act as if they loved God in order to take advantage of him) with something better-that-should-be (e.g. true lovers of God).8 Once we know what kinds of uses we have to look for, we Wnd that the number of suitable examples decreases dramatically. Of the 198 uses of lauter under investigation, there were six with a noun that was unambiguously in the plural. Of these six, none was non-pejorative: . . .
198 uses of lauter with a plural noun: 6 without a pejorative reading: 0
In this connection, it is likewise suspicious to Wnd that lauter was even absent in a place where its modern counterpart would have been almost obligatory: (7.32)
. . . ob du dem sacrament von lautter golde odder von if you for-the sacrament from pure gold or from eyttell eddelsten steynen eyn monstrantze machtest . . . nothing-but most-precious stones a monstrance made(conj) (WA 11, 433, 17)
The phrase eyttel eddelsten steynen would exactly correspond to modern High German lauter edelsten Steinen (‘nothing-but most precious stones, and a lot 8 This scalar use presumably arose from the ‘purely’ use in contexts where it was clear that ‘pure N’ was worse than what should be:
(i) After analysing an alleged aphrodisiac: ‘This is pure(ly) spring water’ (i.e. this looks like something better, but does not have what would be necessary for what it pretends to be)
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of them at that’).9 Yet Luther reserved lauter for the purity of the gold. In face of this evidence, I conclude that Martin Luther did not possess Modern High German lauter in the sense speciWed in section 7.2. One of his colleagues or friends, however, did. In 1524, one of Luther’s sermons (No. 59 in WA, vol. xv) was protocolled by an anonymous writer and we Wnd passages like the following: (7.33)
. . . die barfuosser haben vil gelts außgeben dem Bapst, das sy den Franciscum iren Abgott auch moechten in des hibsch Register bringen, O ain kostliche eer das gewest wer, . . . ‘the barefooted friars (¼ Franciscans) gave much money to the pope that they might also get Franciscus, their idol, into that nice register, O a Wne honour this would have been, . . .’ sodoch lautter TeuVel solten darinn begriVen as-yet lauter devils should therein comprised seyn und kain haylig be and no saints (WA xv. 772, l. 25; Sermon 59 in 1524, anonymous protocol)
Here we Wnd all the characteristics of modern lauter that we were looking for. Lauter is used with a plural count noun (‘devils’). It is not distributive, i.e. it is not the purity of each single devil that is at stake. And Wnally the example does not match the pejorative use: In this context, devils are contrasted with saints. While a devil is certainly something worse than a saint, it is not a plausible ‘minor’ or ‘fake’ variant of a saint but its opposite. While devils might in principle be able to pretend to be saints, the passage does not therefore Wt the common construction of the pejorative use of lauter. Compare the infelicity of the English and ModHG versions: (7.34) #Es sind bloße Teufel in dem Register und keine Heiligen #There are mere devils in that register and no saints These Wndings suggest that the modern variants of lauter took their origin from onset contexts where lauter in an older sense (namely Type 5 ‘mere’) was used with poor pragmatic support. While the speaker might have wanted to allude to the opposition between ‘real’ and ‘minor’ things, the reader/hearer felt this allusion dubitable enough to consider (consciously or unconsciously) other possibilities. At the beginning of the next section, we will see that an 9
In fact, the older obsolete adjective eitel is rendered by lauter in modern editions of old texts, e.g. the stories of Till Eulenspiegel (compare the Benz and Bote/Sichtermann editions: ‘Wie Till Eulenspiegel einmal Eulen und Meerkatzen buk’).
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‘only’-interpretation was one easily accessible possibility—licensing future ‘only’-uses for the one who understood (7.33) or similar examples in this way. Before turning to semantic analysis, however, let me round oV the data survey. So far, I have restricted attention to the use of lauter in theological contexts, even though of a kind that enjoyed a wide lay audience. In order to complement these Wndings, I traced the uses of lauter in a more mundane kind of text, namely in recipes and medical texts. The following Wndings are based on the Gloning collection, digital editions of Wfteen cookbooks between 1350 and 1686.10 Predictably, a completely diVerent range of semantic shades of lauter play a role in these texts. Among other things, they nicely witness the increasing loss of adjectival inXection over the centuries that created the morphosyntactic background for the semantic shift. In the oldest sources up to 1500, we exclusively Wnd adjectival or verbal causative uses (la¨utern, lauter machen) in the sense of ‘pure’, ‘purify’. From 1500 on, there are Wrst isolated phrases lauter wasser (pure water), however commonly backed by inXected uses lauter(e)s wasser that indicate the intended sense. After 1550, authors make increased use of the inXectionless variant, and the notion of ‘purifying’ things seems to gain importance in cooking. Text Glo 10 (dating from 1581) frequently refers to ‘pure/puriWed’ butter, wine, milk, and sugar, apart from the common ‘water’. Queerly, the author also requires ‘lauter eyer, Eydotter, Eyweißen’ (¼ ‘lauter’ eggs, egg yolk, egg white) in numerous recipes. While this at Wrst looks like a clear case of the ‘many’ use of lauter, the uses are complemented by adjectival phrases like lautern Eydottern. I hence suspect that the author may have thought of ‘unrotten, fresh egg’. A Wnal, grammatically ambiguous use in the same text advises the reader that (7.35) solche such oder or
Wu¨rst sausages RindXeisch beef-meat
kennsten wol von lauter Schweinen could-you well of lauter (¼pure) pork machen make’
These uses witness the wide variety of shades of ‘purity’ that can play a role in cooking, ranging from ‘unrotten’ over ‘unpolluted’ to connotation free ‘pure, unmixed’. About 100 years later, however, we Wnd that lauter in the modern ‘only’ sense has entered into common language. Glo 11 (1686) contains the following instruction: 10 In view of the fact that Gloning is a private site rather than an oYcial corpus, it is fully referenced in the bibliographic section.
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(7.36) darnach thut mans (¼ HammelXeisch) herauß seihet das Wasser after that does one-it (it ¼ mutton) out sieves the water ab/ und henckts in Rauch/ und raucherts mit lauter oV and hangs-it into smoke and smokes-it with lauter Kranawetstauden juniper shrubs’ Given that juniper shrubs do not diVer in purity, we may assume that the point of the passage was: smoke the meat only with, and with suYciently many, juniper shrubs without any wood of a diVerent scent. Hence the example constitutes a clear instance of lauter in the ‘only’ sense in combination with a plural count noun. In conclusion, in the context of cooking, wine-making, and medicine, lauter is not used in a variety of readings as rich as in theological sources. Grammatically ambiguous uses are commonly complemented by unambiguous adjectival uses in the same texts that stabilize the ‘purity’ reading of lauter. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the wider range of readings of lauter eventually found its way into these texts but in all probability did not take its origin there.
7.4 The Meaning of Lauter Let me recapitulate the relevant facts about lauter around 1500. Within the range of possible uses, the following two are of particular interest for us: (7.37) purity: ‘only, pure’ + mass nouns (e.g. ‘water’), abstracta (e.g. ‘mercy’) (7.38)
scalar, pejorative: ‘mere’ + any nouns including count nouns (e.g. ‘pretender’)
We saw that pejorative constructions with plural count nouns in the sense (7.38) which lacked the appropriate kind of reference scale were crucial borderline cases between old and modern lauter. These were reinterpreted as instances of an extended (7.37) ‘only’-like use of lauter. This reading, synonymous with German rein, English pure, is our semantic ‘raw material’ as given in (7.39) with an example NP in (7.39b): (7.39)
a. ½½ rein ¼ lPlx(8y(y#x ! P(y))) b. ½½ reiner Wein ¼ lx(8y(y#x ! Wine(y)))
These formulae require a brief intermezzo in mereology (that will also bring us one step further towards modern lauter). Talking about the purity of a piece of matter, we make a statement about the parts it consists of. Pure
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substances contain only smaller parts of one kind whereas mixed pieces of matter contain varying parts. Link (1983) turned some simple empirical observations about parts and wholes into a formal axiomatic theory that characterizes the core properties of part–whole structures. Link’s system has since turned out to be a valuable tool of linguistic research, allowing us to understand how formal properties of part–whole structures are reXected in grammar. We need not recapitulate Link’s theory but I will borrow his concept of a part-of relation as well as the notation: a # m is true if and only if the piece of matter a is a part of the larger piece of matter m. The formulae in (7.39) make use of this relation. A further interesting result in Link (1983) was that only slight modiWcations of the system are necessary in order to adapt it to groups of objects/persons and their parts. The idea is that discrete objects (like Lego blocks, persons, apples, cows, etc.) can give rise to pluralities (or groups) of objects and that the logical laws guiding the relations between larger agglomerations, smaller sub-agglomerations, and atomic parts are much the same as those that characterize parts and wholes in the domain of substances and abstracta. The analogy has since been successfully exploited (e.g. Krifka (1989), Lasersohn (1995), Landman (2000), and much other work), but our present case will only rely on mereology in a very simple way. In the following, I will use subscripts to the part-of relation to distinguish parts and wholes in the domain of matter #m from parts and wholes in the domain of discrete objects #o . This distinction allows us to propose an adjective ‘purely/only’ for discrete objects: I will call it pure* to stress its hypothetical nature as opposed to ‘pure’ in (7.40a). (7.40) a. purity for matter: ½½pure ¼ lPlx(8y(y#m x ! P(y) ) ) b. purity for objects: ½½pure ¼ lPlx(8y(y#o x ! P(y) ) ) (7.40) suggests that purity for matter and objects is conceptually similar; but natural languages carefully distinguish the two notions. A brief review of words for ‘pure’ in current German and English reveals, however, that they do not automatically apply to discrete objects. Yet adjectives with the meaning ‘pure’ can indeed develop an adverbial variant that applies to discrete objects; compare English pure–purely, bare–barely, German bloß(e,er,es)–bloßAdv . We can hence conclude that languages draw a clear line between the notions ‘purity for matter’ and ‘purity for pluralities’ but this line is not insurpassable.11 11 A Wrst practical observation is that pluralities of discrete objects (people, hens, apples, . . . ) are clustered less permanently than lumps of matter. This is particularly true for moving objects like
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We are now very close to an alternative representation of the semantics of lauter in its two readings ‘only’ and ‘many’. My analysis will rest on the notion of purity for objects in (7.40). Observe that the notion of ‘purity’ can be used in an existential and in an exhaustive sense. The existential sense of an adjective like pure is prominent in examples like (7.41). (7.41) In der Salatsauce ist reines Oliveno¨l in the salad-dressing is pure olive-oil ‘There is pure olive oil in the salad dressing.’ In this case, we understand that the dressing contains pure olive oil. We might infer that the dressing does not contain any polluting substances. The statement here is existential: ‘There is something X in this salad dressing that is: pure olive oil.’ You might even think of recipies that require the mixing of ‘pure N ’ and ‘mixed N ’ in certain proportions. (7.41) does not state that the dressing consists only of olive oil. The exhaustive sense of adjectives with the meaning ‘pure’ is illustrated in (7.42): (7.42) Im Glas ist reiner Rotwein. In-the glass is pure red-wine ‘There is pure red wine in this glass.’ Imagine that you are a guest in a Swabian Wirtshaus and have just got your order: a Viertele Trollinger (250 ml of Trollinger red wine). This being your Wrst exploration of Swabian wines, you wonder at the light colour and mild taste of the wine and address the inn keeper with sceptical questions. If he answers with (7.42), he and you will understand it as ‘all there is in your glass is pure red wine’. In this context, the hearer/speaker Wrst accommodates some salient object (‘a maximal quantity of liquid in the glass’) and makes a statement about its purity. The keeper could be accused of lying if he was uttering (7.42) with a tacit afterthought ‘there is pure red wine in your glass— among other things’
persons or animals. The group of three Chinese students in the hall may soon dissociate into two groups of one and two Chinese students respectively, which may grow into groups of Chinese, Swedish, and French students and so on. German ‘rein’ nicely reXects this observation: ‘rein’ can refer to institutionalized groups of individuals as in (i) but is unacceptable with count noun plurals. (i) eine reine Ma¨dchenklasse a pure girl’s-class ¼ a class that consists exclusively of girls *es sind reine Ma¨dchen it are pure girls
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I propose that the two readings of lauter in Modern German arise from the property in (7.40b) in an existential and an exhaustive interpretation, respectively. We understand that lauter N, like all other bare noun phrases in Modern German (and English), undergoes tacit existential quantiWcation which provides the respective referent: ‘there is something x’. Moreover, this ‘something x’ will be further speciWed in two possible ways. Under the ‘only’ use, we will understand that x is maximal with respect to the description given by the rest of the sentence, as in the Trollinger example. Under the ‘many’ use of lauter, we will understand that x is some striking object we want to talk about. Under both readings, x should be ‘big’ or ‘numerous’, depending on whether we talk about objects or substances. The following scheme summarizes this analysis: (7.43) ½½lauter ¼ lPlx(8y(y#o x ! P(y) ) ) + existential closure: 9X + contextual speciWcations: ‘only’: x is the maximal object described by the ‘rest of the sentence’ ‘many’: x is attracting the speaker’s attention by its sheer size This analysis oVers a uniform semantic representation for Modern German lauter and diVers only minimally from the original word. Let us go through some examples in order to see how the ‘only’ and ‘many’ readings are computed. I will Wrst consider the ‘only’ use of lauter. According to the proposed analysis, it will arise as follows: (7.44) Susi aß lauter Birkenpilze ‘Susi ate only birch mushrooms.’ Lauter itself does not have quantifying force. Therefore, tacit existential quantiWcation has to take place (Heim 1982, Kamp and Reyle 1993, van Geenhoven 1996, and others). This theoretical step can be spelled out as in (7.45) where the English words in italics explicate existential closure: (7.45) [ Susi [ aß [ some [thing [that was lauter Birkenpilze ]RelS ]N0 ]NP ]VP ]S Note that only the tacit quantiWer turns ‘lauter Birkenpilze’ into a full noun phrase (DP). The computation of the noun phrase will proceed as follows: (7.46)
a. ½½lauter ¼ lPlX. 8x( x # X ! P(x) ) b. ½½lauter Birkenpilze ¼ lX. 8x( x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x)) c. ½½thing that was lauter Birkenpilze ¼ lX. 8x( x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x))
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This is the point where exhaustiveness enters into the interpretation: we are not considering just some thing that Susi ate but all she ate. Likewise, we understand that that ‘thing’ is not small. (7.47)
contextual restriction: ‘is of considerable size and maximal with respect to the property under consideration’ ½½thing that was lauter Birkenpilze ¼ lX. 8x(Relevant(x) ! x # X) ^ Big(X) ^ 8 x( x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x))
Let me Wnish the computation with the last steps, bringing in the existential quantiWer, verb, and subject: (7.48) a. existential closure: ½½some thing that was lauter Birkenpilze ¼ lQ [9X. 8 x(Relevant(x) ! x # X) ^ Big(X) ^ 8 x( x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x)) ^ Q(X)] b. combination with the subject: ½½Susi a some thing that was lauter Birkenpilze ¼ 9X. 8 x(Relevant(x) ! x # X) ^ Big(X) ^ 8 x( x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x)) ^ Eat( Susi, X) If we assume that a natural instantiation for everything relevant here is food of Susi we get the intended meaning: the maximal thing that Susi ate consisted entirely of birch mushrooms and was a considerable quantity. Note that this pragmatic strengthening of the proposition is necessary in order to distinguish the information conveyed by (7.46) from a mere Susi ate birch mushrooms. Without the maximality condition, the sentences Susi ate birch mushrooms and Susi ate ‘lauter’ birch mushrooms would be synonymous. After this sample computation of the ‘only’ reading of lauter, we can now turn to a sample derivation of the ‘many’ use. Remember that the basic semantic analysis is the same as for the previous reading, excepting only that the contextual speciWcation of the referent is diVerent: the ‘many’ use of lauter carries an undertone of surprise, signals that the speaker has met something striking. (7.49) Da stehen ja lauter Birkenpilze there stand PRT ‘lauter’ birch-mushrooms ‘There are a lot of birch mushrooms’; with an undertone of surprise, and possibly more objects on the scene
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As before, the sentence in (7.49) speciWes the tacit semantic material that I will assume in the interpretation. (7.50) [ Da [ stehen [ some [thing [that is lauter Birkenpilze]RelS ]N ’]NP ]VP ]S (7.51) a. ½½lauter ¼ lPlX:8x(x # X ! P(x) ) b. ½½lauterBirkenpilze ¼ lX:8x(x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x)) c. ½½thing that is lauter Birkenpilze12 ¼ lX:8x(x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x)) At this point, we see the diVerence between the ‘many’ sense and the ‘only’ sense of lauter. Under the ‘many’ reading, we do not understand anything about the referent being maximal. In this case, however, the speaker conveys that there is some striking(ly) numerous or big plurality of objects or matter that he wants to report about. (7.51) d. contextual restriction: ‘striking and numerous/big’ ½½thing that is lauter Birkenpilze ¼ lX. Striking(X) ^ Big(X) ^ 8x(x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x)) The remainder of the computation proceeds as before. (7.51) e. ½½some thing that is lauter Birkenpilze ¼ lQ9X. Striking(X) ^ Big(X) ^ 8x(x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x)) ^ Q(X) f. ½½Da stehen some thing that is lauter Birkenpilze ¼ 8X. Striking(X) ^ Big(X) ^ 8x(x # X ! Birch-Mushroom(x)) ^ Located (X, There) (reference of There is determined by deixis) Note that this use of lauter mirrors the existential use of the original purity adjective, exempliWed in (7.41). Let me brieXy recapitulate where we are now. After summarizing the readings of lauter at about 1500, I demonstrated how the notion of ‘purity’ can be extended from the domain of substances to the domain of individual objects. I pointed out that ‘purity’ in the substance sense can be used existentially and exhaustively and have used these two variants as the basis to derive the two uses of modern German lauter. The resultant representations are now available to challenge the more simplistic Wrst approximations given in (7.13) and (7.15), repeated below: 12 Technically, one might want to assume that ‘thing’ contributes something like a condition to the end that X be an object.
To Be or Not to Be a Determiner (7.13)
(7.15)
225
Wrst, now dismissed, analysis of lauter in the ‘only’ sense: ½½lauter=only ¼ lQlP:8x(P(x) ! Q(x) ) P to be instantiated by the ‘rest of the sentence’ Q contributed by sister noun Wrst, now dismissed, analysis of lauter in the ‘many’ sense: lQlP:Many x(Q(x) ^ P(x) ) )
The current proposals are diVerent and more complicated. Can they answer the questions that were set up in section 7.1? Can they reXect the data more faithfully than the simple initial analyses? I will use the remainder of this section to address this point. First, I will argue that the proposed analysis for lauter/‘only’ is superior to a simple representation in (7.13) because it makes better predictions about . . .
several kinds of predicative uses of lauter NPs with speciWc objects combinations with Wrst and second person plurals use of lauter NPs in generic sentences
I will next turn to lauter/‘many’ and derive the peculiarities listed in section 7.2 from the present analysis. Finally, I will come to the stranding prohibition and derive why neither of the proposed meanings for lauter makes sense in the contrastive topic construction that is expressed by stranding. Let us Wrst consider the diVerences between the two representations for lauter/only as in (7.13) in contrast to (7.43). According to the Wrst, now dismissed proposal, the phrase ‘lauter N’ denoted a generalized quantiWer. In particular, it did not contribute a property that could be attributed to an object, be it a piece of substance or an agglomeration of discrete objects. According to the current proposal, the phrase lauter N has much in common with bare indeWnites. Like bare indeWnites, the overt material contributes a property, and we would expect that they show a similar range of uses. Generic readings are a common second interpretation of bare indeWnites. Predicational constructions are another one. If we test lauter N in appropriate contexts, we should get evidence to discriminate between an analysis in terms of a property or in terms of a quantiWer. Interestingly, the data favour the property analysis. I will illustrate this claim with four types of referential uses of lauter N phrases, contrasting them with nur N phrases (‘only N’). First, lauter N can be used to predicate over a given object. Nur N cannot, or can only marginally, occur in the same context. (7.52) die Ma¨nner dort sind lauter Schweizer the men there are all Swiss
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(7.53) *die Ma¨nner dort sind nur Schweizer. the men there are only Swiss pejorative sense possible: ‘merely Swiss, nothing better’ Our analysis predicts this contrast. The deictic subject noun phrase provides a referent and lauter N can predicate over this referent. Second, lauter N can be used to predicate over arguments of verbs that denote a speciWc object. The examples in (7.54) illustrate this for the participle gefu¨llt (Wlled) that relates the speciWc object ‘die Fu¨llung’ (‘the Wlling’, meaning the entire body of things or matter Wlling the container). The Wlling can be attributed to be lauter Perlen (pearls only), but not characterized as consisting of only pearls by secondary attribution of nur (only), as witnessed by the unacceptable sentence. (7.54) Die the *Die the
Kiste box Kiste box
ist is ist is
mit with mit with
lauter lauter nur only
Perlen pearls Perlen pearls
gefu¨llt. Wlled gefu¨llt. Wlled
Thirdly, only lauter N phrases occur as attribute: (7.55) wir, we, *wir, *we, (7.56) ihr, you, *ihr, *you,
lauter lauter nur only lauter lauter nur only
aufrechte upright aufrechte upright gute good gute good
Bu¨rger citizens Bu¨rger citizens
Roms of-Rome Roms of-Rome
Freunde, . . . friends citizens, . . . citizens . . .
Once more, this shows that lauter N contributes a property that can be predicated of some plurality. In particular, it does not denote a quantiWer.13 And Wnally, lauter N can be used in generic statements in a reading that cannot be paralleled by quantiWers (small capitals indicate stress): (7.57) a. Lauter Professoren kriegen immer Streit. lauter professors get always quarrel ‘Groups that consist purely of professors will always quarrel.’ b. *nur Professoren kriegen Immer Streit. 13
All three types of examples above will show the same behaviour if lauter is focused, i.e. contrasted with not pure(ly). This would ensure that we indeed face the ‘only’ sense of lauter; see the data in section 7.2.
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(7.58) a. lauter Stimmungskanonen verderben die Party. lauter wags spoil the party b. *nur Stimmungskanonen verderben die Party. Consider (7.57). We contrast groups consisting purely of professors with other, mixed groups and assert that groups of the former kind always tend to quarrel. Importantly, the phrase lauter N provides a description of the kind of entity about which we want to make a generic statement. Even if the hearer will have to guess about the more speciWc occasions where such groups might be encountered, this does not seem to pose a particular interpretative problem. The same reading is not available for (7.57b). At least two factors prevent this. First, the operator nur (only) would need some appropriate kind of material to specify its domain of quantiWcation. In practical terms, we need to know who are those who are only professors. It seems to be harder for hearers to hypothesize an appropriate speciWcation here than to come up with some pluralic entity that is predicated to be ‘lauter N’. And secondly, the phrase lauter N immediately contributes a good subject argument for the verb ‘start to quarrel’. The phrase only N does not. If we understand N as the subject of the sentence, ‘nur’ (‘only’) will always yield a reading to the end that only professors, and never other people, always start to quarrel. In summary, these four kinds of examples show that lauter N (in the ‘only’ sense) behaves as we would expect for a property, and not as we would expect for a generalized quantiWer. This observation supports the analysis that was proposed in (7.43), and which decomposes the meaning of lauter into a property, an existential quantiWcation, and a contextual maximality condition. Turning now to the dual, lauter/‘many’, I will argue that the proposed analysis is likewise conWrmed by the empirical Wndings. In order to do this, I will come back to the surprising data about stranding and focusing that were surveyed in section 7.2. Let us Wrst turn to the question why the ‘many’ reading disappears under focus. I repeat the relevant example (7.23) for convenience: (7.23) Da sind nicht lauter Bonbons auf dem Tisch ( . . . es hat na¨mlich auch Schokolade) Reading 1: ‘There are not only bonbons on the table’ ( . . . in fact, there is also chocolate) prohibited reading 2: *‘There are not many bonbons on the table’ * . . . sondern bloß zwei / . . . *in fact, there are just two of them
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According to the proposed analysis, the only semantic contribution of lauter (in both readings) consists in a statement about the proportion of P parts in a given plurality y. (7.59) ½½lautero ¼ lPly. 8x( x # y ! P(x)) According to current views in focus theory, focusing only aVects the semantic contribution of an item and evokes contextually salient, conceptually suitable alternatives of the same logical type. In our case, these will be other proportions as might be expressed by the phrases ‘X consist(s) 90 per cent, 80 per cent, . . . , 50 per cent, . . . of P ’: (7.60) ½½lauterf ¼ {lPly. Nine-of-ten x( x # y; P(x)), lPly. Eight-of-ten x( x # y; P(x)), . . . lPly. Five-of-ten x( x # y; P(x)), . . . }14 These will yield alternative propositions about some object A consisting entirely, 90 per cent, of 80 per cent, etc. of P. The object A remains the same in all alternatives (due to the fact that the quantiWcation is not part of the semantics of lauter). If we are in the ‘only’ reading scenario, we will hence assert that some given, maximal set of relevant objects consists completely of P, rather than of P plus other parts. This is an informative contribution in conversation. Applying focus under the ‘many’ construal, in contrast, would lead to the assertion that there is some striking entity y that consists 100 per cent of P and evoke alternatives to the end that there might be other entities that are only 90 per cent, 80 per cent, etc. P. Consider example (7.24) of section 7.2, repeated below, to illustrate what happens. (7.24) Da sind sogar lauter Bonbons auf dem Tisch ‘there are even lauter bonbons on the table’ Under the ‘many’ reading of lauter, we would assert that there exists something y on the table that consists purely of bonbons. We would presuppose that this was more surprising than the alternatives, namely: that there is something y on the table that consists 90 per cent of bonbons that there is something y on the table that consists 80 per cent of bonbons that there is something y on the table that consists 50 per cent of bonbons
However, all these alternatives will imply that there is also something that consists 100 per cent of bonbons—just take the respective bonbon parts of the y. 14 I adopt this—hopefully transparent—notation for the second order quantiWers that relate the size of some set X to the size of the subset of those parts in X that are P.
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Therefore the net assertion would be incoherent: we signal that we want to make a very striking assertion, but the logic of the alternatives implies that we actually assert the most common thing.15 There just being some totality of bonbons on the table is not the least likely but the most likely alternative. (Unlike the ‘only’ statement: it may well be a surprising fact to Wnd that all there is on the table is bonbons.) Similar incoherencies arise in other focus constructions. (7.61) #Da sind auch lauter Bonbons auf dem Tisch. there are also lauter bonbons on the table The use of auch (‘also’) presupposes that some alternatives are true. This amounts to the presupposition that there are some bonbons on the table, and in the ‘many’ use, (7.61) would then assert that there is also some y on the table that consists solely of bonbons—an empty assertion, given that it is logically implied by the presupposition. (In this case, the ‘only’ reading does not make much sense either, compare the questionable English ‘There are also only bonbons on the table’). Likewise, the sentence in (7.62) is preferably understood as stating something about the percentage of bonbons among the entirety of things on the table, hence yielding the ‘only’ reading. (7.62) Da sind nicht lauter Bonbons auf dem Tisch ( . . . es hat na¨mlich auch Schokolade) ‘There are not ‘‘lauter’’ bonbons on the table.’ ( . . . in fact, there is also chocolate) In summary, the complex analysis of the ‘many’ reading of lauter allows us to understand why this reading vanishes in a variety of contexts. The semantic contribution of lauter consists in proportion statements. It makes sense for one given, Wxed object to consider whether it is in part, or entirely, made out of P. It is not informative to consider whether varying things are in part, or entirely, made out of P. I Wnally turn to apply this technique in order to explain the stranding prohibition for lauter, once more exempliWed in the minimal pair in (7.63): (7.63) Steinpilze haben wir viele/massig/ *lauter gefunden. Penny-bun-bolets have we many *lauter found In order to understand the nature of the prohibition (for lauter in either reading), I will recapitulate the pragmatic implications of stranding constructions 15
Remember that a similar kind of reasoning was used in Chapter 5.
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that were brieXy sketched before. It will be instructive to start with a grammatical example: (7.64) Steinpilze haben wir viele gefunden. Penny-bun-bolets have we many found The fronting of the noun signals that the sentence is one in a list of answers to the double question: ‘Of what kind of mushrooms did we Wnd how many?’16 It is part of the pragmatics of this construction that the sentence in question may not provide an answer that completely settles the issue which was raised by the double-Wh-question (Bu¨ring 2003). In other words: a sentence of the type in (7.64) is pragmatically licensed if, and only if, it does not answer the respective double WH question exhaustively. (7.64) meets this requirement because further answers remain logically possible: we found three chanterelles, we found one parasol, etc.17 What would be wrong with (7.65)? (7.65) *Steinpilze haben wir lauter gefunden. Penny-bun-bolets have we lauter found According to our considerations about focusing lauter, sentence (7.65) would signal coherence with the following question (it is intricate and I italicize the WH expressions). (7.66) Of what kind of mushroom did we Wnd some quantity that consists to which percentage of that kind? Two scenarios are possible here, and under both, the sentence is illicit. In the Wrst scenario, we actually did Wnd penny bun bolets and nothing else. The question (7.66) could then uniquely be answered for the kind ‘penny bun bolet’ (100 per cent) and this logically implies all other statements for other kinds: chanterelles—0 per cent, parasols—0 per cent, etc. Therefore we will violate the requirement that (7.65) should leave other answers open. In the second scenario, we actually found mushrooms of several kinds. But then, question (7.66) does not have a well-deWned answer at all. Imagine that you pick some random choice of mushrooms out of your basket. Whatever you get, it will consist of diVerent kinds of mushrooms in varying proportions. 16 This eVect is also exhibited by the English translation. We have seen this construction in section 6.3 and I will not repeat the details here. 17 Note that the requirement does not amount to the condition that we actually did Wnd more kinds of mushrooms. We may well continue with ‘. . . aber sonst leider keine’ (‘but no other ones, unfortunately’). What is important is that the sentence may not logically imply a full answer to the double WH question.
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(And the statement that there might be pickings consisting purely of penny bun bolets is, Wnally, completely irrelevant.)18 To put it brieXy, speakers will reject a sentence like (7.65) because there is no possible way to make pragmatic sense of the stranding construction. The sentence exhibits a syntactic structure that is only licensed because it has a certain well-deWned pragmatic function. Where this function cannot be exploited, the sentence is judged ungrammatical.19 With this example, we have gone through all the peculiar and challenging data that cast doubt on the simple analysis of lauter in section 7.2. I argued that the eventual semantic representation of lauter in (7.43) can explain these observations. I want to end this section by recapitulating once more the somewhat complex line of argumentation and summarizing the results. Our starting point was two crucial uses of lauter around 1550 that laid the ground for the modern use. I proposed a semantic representation for modern lauter that diVers only minimally in semantic content from its predecessor, by generalizing the mereological notion of purity in the domain of substances to the domain of individuals. The two uses of modern lauter come about by contextual speciWcations that mirror the existential and exhaustive use of purity adjectives in the domain of substances/abstracta. According to this proposal, the modern term is a conservative extension of the older ‘purity’ adjective. Yet the plausibility of the analysis in terms of diachronic semantics is counteracted by its complexity in synchronic terms. How do we know that the very complicated semantic evaluation of lauter like shown in (7.48) and (7.51), even if they might reXect an intermediate language stage, have not since been replaced by simpler analyses along the lines proposed in section 7.2, (7.13) and (7.15)? In answer to this question, a large part of the present section was devoted to challenging the simple analyses by synchronic data. In a Wrst step, the eventual analysis of lauter in the ‘only’ reading was defended against the simpler version (7.13) on the grounds of four kinds of examples: predication over deWnite objects, predication over speciWc arguments of a predicate, attributive uses, and use in generic statements. All four show that lauter N phrases 18 The reader might have the spontaneous impression that (7.66) is a queer question that should be forbidden no matter what its semantics would be. I agree. Yet we want to explain the ungrammaticality of stranding lauter constructions and it certainly is an interesting result that these sentences can be excluded on pragmatic reasons. 19 The spirit of this explanation follows Bu¨ring (1997) in that the illicitness of a structure is not posited as a syntactic fact but derived from several conspiring factors. Remember that a simpler variant of the argument would suYce to rule out stranding for the ‘only’ uses of lauter even under the assumption that lauter and only are synonymous. The problem in section 7.2 was: how can we explain the missing possibility of stranding lauter in the ‘many’ sense?
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contribute a property of some referent which can be indeWnite, a speciWc given referent, or generic. I argued that this behaviour could not be explained on the basis of an analysis of lauter as a generalized quantiWer as in (7.13). In a second step, the Wnal analysis of lauter in its ‘many’ reading could likewise be shown to be superior to a simple treatment as a synonym of many/viel(e). Two facts were taken into consideration. First, the proposed analysis could explain why lauter, unlike viel(e), cannot be put into focus and evoke alternatives like ‘few’, ‘a lot’, ‘an average amount of ’, etc. And secondly, the proposed analysis could explain why lauter, unlike all other synonyms of many in German, cannot enter the stranding construction. This extended discussion of the intricate synchronic facts about lauter after change conWrmed the adequacy of our Wne-grained semantic analysis for present-day lauter, and surprisingly so, as the main motivations for the representation were historical-diachronic in nature. The case hence evidences the great heuristic value of combining diachronic and synchronic research, demonstrating that both sides will take proWt from this interaction. Another point that can be illustrated with this example is the necessity of refraining from semantic characterizations of an item as ‘meaning something almost like NN’. Remember that, at the outset of this chapter, we noted that lauter in the modern sense means something similar to ‘only’, or ‘many’, respectively. It is intriguing to see that this superWcial similarity can be achieved by pragmatic restrictions of an item that is, in truth, very similar to something completely diVerent—the adjective ‘pure’. The Wrst users of modern lauter made only minimal changes to the older item. All those who followed—no matter whether they were aware of the origin of lauter or not— faithfully transmitted the resulting semantic object. In particular, lauter demonstrates that speakers not only ‘imitate the patterns’ shown by other speakers, understood in a simplistic way. The extended review of synchronic facts about lauter, including very subtle data, proved that the ‘queer semantic object’ with all its side eVects has remained part of the grammar of German over 450 years. There is a surprisingly conservative resistance to further changes in the meaning of lauter towards simpler ‘many’ and ‘only’. The Wnal section of the chapter will oVer some speculative thoughts, based on Keenan and Stavi’s Universal, as to what this may tell us about language change.
7.5 Summary The proposed analysis for the semantic changes in the meaning and pragmatics of lauter can be summarized as follows. The former adjective lauter lost adjectival inXection and turned into an uninXected item. Semantically,
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however, it remained an adjective, extending the original notion of ‘purity (of substances)’ to the domain of discrete objects. It is used in two ways that mirror existential and exhaustive uses of older ‘purity’ adjectives. These two uses come along with conventionalized contextual speciWcations. The exhaustive use conventionally refers to some maximal entity described by the rest of the sentence, hence giving rise to the ‘only’ reading. The existential use is restricted to pluralities of entities that are not only ‘purely Ns’ but are strikingly large. The net results of semantic contribution and pragmatic speciWcation of lauter are ‘only (+many)’ statements and ‘many’ statements. Nevertheless, many generations of speakers (approximately for 450 years) resisted the temptation to collapse the word with either ‘only’ or ‘many’ (or both). What we Wnd here is in fact a striking case of language inertia: the case of lauter exempliWes the grammatical and lexical stability of an item in time. What factors block further reanalysis of the item? At least for the ‘only’ reading, an explanation suggests itself. We noted in section 7.2 that a tentative analysis of lauter as denoting ‘only’ would violate the universal restriction that determiners be conservative. The universal, which has been discussed more extensively at the beginning of this chapter, is repeated below: (7.20) Conservativity A binary quantiWer Q is called conservative if it obeys the following condition: For all sets A, B:?Q(A, B) if and only if Q(A, A \ B) (7.21) All quantiWer denotations of determiners are conservative Keenan and Stavi (1986) This universal looks like an arbitrary and accidential algebraic property at Wrst sight, but in fact captures a contentful observation about form and function of noun phrases. Determiners denote binary quantiWers, operators that relate two sets A and B. However, noun phrases in German are also the grammatical category that is used to introduce referents, to take up topics, to refer to those things that the speaker wants to talk about.20 Given that determiner plus noun together constitute the NP denotation, the resulting strategy seems to be that speakers understand NPs as ‘introducing or taking up referents’ whereas the extension of the verbal part of the sentence reports further properties of these referents. 20 This generalization is, of course, restricted to those languages that possess noun phrases as a syntactic category. For a broader perspective on quantiWcation in natural languages, the reader is referred to Partee (1995) which lucidly relates the tendencies that we observe in the well-studied European languages to the grammar of languages that code quantiWcation in completely diVerent ways.
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If speakers decided to use lauter so as to denote ‘only’, this denotation— although conceptually not far away from an adjective that means ‘pure’— would violate this organization. Interestingly, ‘pure’ adjectives frequently do acquire an ‘only’ reading (as in (7.40b)); yet in order to do so they need to be shifted into another grammatical category in the German(ic) system: the category of adverbs.21 The examples below illustrate this fact. (7.68)
*Bauer Meckes hat reine Schweine. (adjective) *Bauer Meckes hat pure Schweine. (adjective) *Farmer Jones has pure pigs (adjective)
(7.69) Farmer Jones has purely pigs (adverb) Farmer Jones hat bloß Schweine (adverb) Adverbial operators and quantiWers are tied less tightly to their respective arguments than determiners. Extended investigations into the semantics of adverbial quantiWers have brought to light that focus, information structure, and word order eVects will determine the restrictor and scope of the quantifer. There is no preselection of arguments by syntactic structure. While ‘only’ is hence prohibited as a determiner in German, an adverb with this meaning is a legitimate word.22 It appears that such synchronic restrictions also restrict the direction of possible reanalysis. We have assumed throughout this monograph that reanalysis starts where speakers/hearers adopt a tentative new semantic and syntactic analysis for some given sentence. The stability of lauter shows that new semantic analyses must not only be pragmatically salient and frequent, but they must moreover observe the restrictions of Universal Grammar. This, in and of itself, is not surprising. Universal Grammar is, by deWnition, the bedrock of linguistic structure that all languages are built on. However, it may be surprising to Wnd that actual hypotheses about universals—and pretty abstract ones—are corroborated by facts about language development. This shows once more that the notions and formalisms in formal semantics can be fruitfully set to work in the investigation of diachronic developments. The analytical potential and logical systematicity of human reasoning is certainly the most astonishing among our cognitive abilities. We Wnd its reXexes manifest here, guiding the ways in which speaker communities use, adapt, and preserve their language.
21
Unfortunately, Heine and Kuteva (2002) have not yet reported on the grammaticalization of ‘pure’. See however Eckardt (1999) for information structure eVects on the argument structure of determiners. 22
8 Semantic Reanalysis The Algebraic Backbone of Meaning Change 8.1 The Proposal, and its Ancestors The present monograph oVers an investigation into the nature of meaning change under structural reanalysis. Its focus was changes in meaning as they go hand in hand with a reorganization of sentences in terms of morphosyntax. These changes were analysed by making use of the tools, techniques, and results of truth conditional semantic theory. My research was motivated by the observation that structural reanalysis essentially refers to sentence composition—syntactically as well as semantically. It therefore seemed expedient to use a semantic framework that pays special attention to composition. Truth conditional semantics is still the semantic paradigm that addresses semantic composition in the most explicit manner. It allows us to represent the semantic combination of content words, function words, particles, meaningful aYxes, implicit parameters, and complex constructions in a uniform and coherent framework. The use of an overarching semantic framework is mandatory because structural reanalysis predominantly occurs in connection with grammaticalization processes. Grammaticalization, by deWnition, results in functional items.1 Truth conditional semantics rests on a tradition where function words are not merely viewed as secondary shadows of content words. They are, to quote von Fintel (1995), the ‘bread and butter for the working semanticist’. The framework is therefore suited to investigate semantic
1 See Campbell (2001). Discussing the nature of the unidirectionality hypothesis, Campbell oVers convincing arguments that the only coherent way to reconcile theoretical terms and observed examples leads us to use ‘grammaticalization’ in a descriptive sense: grammaticalization by deWnition covers all and exactly those language developments that lead from more lexical to more functional.
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reanalysis without any pre-set limits to the semantic nature of the resulting items. The case studies took up the general methods of the framework, deWning the content of words in terms of truth conditional properties, combinatorial properties (i.e. logical type), presuppositions, and pragmatic properties. They were related to existing detailed synchronic analyses. In particular, all semantic denotations were assumed to be as explicit, as detailed, and as speciWc as possible. Contextual contributions to the meaning of a construction were likewise explicated and related to the reliable literal meaning core of a word. The detailed semantic descriptions for words at a given stage propose an equally detailed, speciWc, and explicit analysis of language change. I assume that semantic reanalysis occurs in one discrete step. By redistributing the semantic labour between the parts of a sentence in some speciWc utterance situation, the hearer will hypothesize about new meanings for old words and constructions. These hypotheses may sometimes be consciously reXected, but more often unconscious adaptations of the hearer’s mental lexicon. I will presently comment on gradual change and how it can be integrated into this picture. The following characterization of semantic reanalysis suggests itself: Semantic reanalysis: The process of semantic reorganization of a sentence whereby the salient overall conveyed information remains the same, but is composed in a diVerent manner. What may have previously been in part assertion, in part implication, turns entirely into a literal assertion after reanalysis. Semantic reanalysis may have repercussions on the meaning of parts of the sentence (constructions, phrases, words, aYxes), leading to a changed meaning under the new semantic composition of the sentence.
This conception of semantic reanalysis contrasts with various proposals in earlier literature. Let me speciWcally recapitulate my main objections to the following three positions: the view of semantic change by loss-and-gain, the view of gradual downtuning and upgrading of meaning components, and the view that meaning change under reanalysis is predominantly metonymic. Undeniably, we can Wnd losses in meaning and gains in meaning at the sentence level in practically any instance of grammaticalization or reanalysis that has been investigated in the literature. The most explicit implementation of the loss-and-gain picture in a general theory of reanalysis was proposed by Langacker (1977) who suggested that all losses and gains can be traced to the word level. His case studies are guided by the following working assumption: word meanings contribute clusters of atomic meanings. Semantic reanalysis occurs where some such atomic meanings get lost while others are newly
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integrated to the word meaning (being formerly pragmatic implicatures). Langacker’s views on semantic reanalysis lost their initial plausibility, I think, mainly because it turned out to be problematic to assume that word meanings consist of atomic concepts. Any preselected set of atomic concepts was hard to defend, and a decomposition into arbitrarily chosen atomic concepts somewhat pointless. (This observation does not aVect the merits of lexical decomposition in other contexts.) Langacker’s basic ideas were however taken up by later authors and transformed into a theory of gradual change. The striking impression of gradual meaning change in the source texts has often been viewed as the most essential feature of semantic change, particularly in the functional tradition (see the concise summary in Wischer and Diewald 2002). Gradual changes in the observable data constitute an indubitable fact about language history. There are, however, few recent worked-out proposals of how such gradual changes should look in detail. I will therefore resort to the account that underlies the discussion in Danchev and Kyto¨ (1994) as one possible model. Danchev and Kyto¨ investigate the change of going to and, like Langacker, propose that the verb should be viewed as denoting a cluster of concepts. These concepts, however, do not contribute to the overall meaning in a feature-like fashion (a concept is either there, or it isn’t) but the semantic concepts themselves can be activated to diVerent degrees in some given utterance. In the case in question, the change from the movement verb to the futurate use of going to is envisaged as follows: by continued pragmatic inferencing, new semantic concepts enter the cluster (e.g. Immediacy, Futurity) and can be activated. First, they are only active to a small degree, but they become more and more ‘active’ over time while, simultaneously, notions like Movement are downtuned. Word meanings, under this conception, can be likened to equalizers in electronic music, where various frequency ranges can be tuned up or down. The diYculties of this view mostly have to do with the fact that speakers sometimes have very speciWc intuitions about possible or impossible uses of a word in some given sentence. We discussed several such speciWc usage patterns throughout the last chapters but I think that the most striking example that stands against this view is the Jespersen cycle (see Chapter 5). The development of nouns towards negation particles would have to be described in the following way. Initially, some noun has a simple lexical meaning (e.g. Step). At some point, it acquires a second conceptual element Negation. Over the centuries, the Step component is downtuned and the Negation component uptuned in order to reach the state of Early Modern French negation. I argued in Chapter 5 that this kind of account cannot
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capture the essence of the corona of negative polarity uses of pas that accompany the straight way from Step to Negation. Crucially, the unguided gradual shifting of meaning components was eventually inadequate to understand the data which, at Wrst sight, looked like a particularly illustrative instance of gradual change. I do not want to deny the impression of gradual meaning shifts as we witness them in the data. The preceding chapters oVered many examples of this impression. I suggest that it is an epiphenomenon of the interaction of Wxed and context-dependent parts of meaning. Note that this proposal is not an ad hoc solution for some questions in historical semantics. Current views about the semantics–pragmatics interface of synchronic language support the explanations for gradual change that were proposed at various places in this study and, once again, synchronic and diachronic research rest on the same theoretical conceptions of meaning. I will oVer a broader discussion of context dependency in section 8.3. My proposal likewise contrasts with the metonymy based view of semantic change under reanalysis as defended in Hopper and Traugott (1993), Koch (1999), Blank (2003), and others. Much valuable and insightful research was conducted in this tradition, and notably the early writings by Traugott and Ko¨nig highlighted the great importance of pragmatic inferencing in semantic change. The emancipation from the notion of metaphor has allowed for a new focus on pragmatic and usage based factors in semantic change. My reservations mainly concern the classiWcation of semantic reanalysis as metonymic because it appears to over-extend and hence weaken the very notion of metonymy. Under the view that I oVer, we are free to reserve the term metonymy for meaning changes that relate to language-independent facts about the world. To repeat a slogan from Chapter 2, a metonymy like ‘car key for car’ rests on a semantic closeness that is created by engineering, and not by language use. In contrast, the relation between a ‘step’ and negation, the relation between movement, purpose, and aim, become salient only when speakers use certain words in certain ways. Evidence abounds in favour of the hypothesis that the initiation of reanalysis rests on certain kinds of utterance situations rather than factual situations. The introduction of the term ‘semantic reanalysis’ in the sense of this monograph should help to elaborate this position and free us from the mesmerizing dichotomy of metaphor and metonymy. My closest predecessors are the theory of generalized invited inferences by Traugott and Dasher (2002) and the pragmatic implicature approach in Levinson (2000). My aim was to reWne their approach by resetting it in a speciWc semantic framework. All major insights in historical pragmatics can
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be reconciled with the picture that was laid out here. The facts and factors in historical pragmatics clearly go beyond the aims of the present monograph in some respects; speciWcally the importance of subjectiWcation as an independent force in language change (a leading theme in Traugott and Dasher 2002). Nevertheless, the present view has its own focal points, and a new range of research issues becomes accessible by making use of the tools of truth conditional semantics and pragmatics.
8.2 Semantic Reanalysis as a Discrete Change A simple view of change by reanalysis should distinguish three stages. First, there is a Pre-stage, a phase of pragmatic enrichment, of phrasalization of a given construction, and conventionalization of implicatures. The development then reaches the turning point where reanalysis takes place. After reanalysis has taken place, there is a Post-stage where a new item, plus its new meaning, has been acquired and speakers gradually explore its new possibilities (actualization, in terms of Timberlake 1977, Andersen 2001c). Talking about a turning point implies that the change itself occurs in one discrete step. In order to prevent misunderstandings, let me add some qualifying remarks. Trivially, all speakers will meet their own turning point situations where they undertake semantic reanalysis of some given utterance. In that sense, we are not concerned with a literal point in time, but with a larger number of such. Individual speakers might encounter several turning point utterance situations before they accept a new item as a reliable part of their lexicon. And some speakers may encounter the new item in unambiguous Post-stage uses before even reanalysing anything by themselves. Nevertheless, semantic reanalysis as a kind of interpretative activity of some speaker addresses single utterances and occurs as one discrete step. The process has much in common with solving an equation in arithmetic. The simple equation (8.1) 5 + x ¼ 12 is nothing but a request to Wgure out which number x, added to 5, would give us 12. Very similar requests were posed by reanalysis: (8.2) ‘Joe’ + Present + x + ‘see a doctor’ ¼ ‘Joe holds the determined intention to see a doctor soon’ The detailed accounts of this request, speciWcally in Chapters 4 and 6, have shown the level of Wne-grainedness at which such equations operate. The value of x, corresponding to the semantic contribution of b- going to, has to
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fulWl a certain function in the combination of semantic material. Chapter 4 revealed that the new contribution is much more sophisticated than a mere concept Futurity. To reiterate: semantically rebuilding a sentence is not a mere add-and-subtract process. The same point is illustrated by the reanalysis of selbst, or of French mie from degree adverb to temporal adverb (‘in any way’ > ‘ever’). I have likened semantic reanalysis to problem solving in algebra. This metaphor implies an expectation that the result of reanalysis is speciWc, concise, and well deWned. This expectation, taken literally, is too strong for reasons that have to do with the unlimited space of properties that are available in formal logic.2 Yet, in a more restricted sense this indeed was the working philosophy throughout this book. Semantic change through reanalysis starts from speciWc and concise meanings and results in speciWc and concise meanings. I want to recapitulate the evidence that supported this view both for the Pre-stage and the Post-stage. This will also oVer the opportunity to come back to the question where gradual change can be hosted in this picture. Deferring the discussion of the Pre-stage to section 8.4, I will Wrst turn to the Post-stage. The strongest argument in favour of our working hypothesis was oVered by the following observation: all items under investigation showed diVerentiated patterns of Post use that are hard to understand as the result of sociolinguistic imitation. Speakers seemed to be guided by very particular grammatical and semantic knowledge about the new items in their language. Let me spell this out for each case. The rise of French negation particles led, as I suggest, through a stage where these particles were used as polarity sensitive items. This diagnosis not only oVers a semantic analysis of emphatic negation, it was moreover clearly conWrmed by the data which showed ‘positive’ uses of all negation particles in NPI contexts. An alternative account of the same development that takes emphatic negation as a semantic primitive would have to explain the mystery why all six particles under consideration adopted the same extra uses that are not licensed by the concept of emphatic negation and yet occurred with great systematicity.
2 Those acquainted with the discussion will recognize that we face another version of the grue puzzle at this point: why is it that no known language possesses a property that consists of ‘being green’ before 1, Jan. 2000 and of ‘being blue’ after this date? Technically speaking, an inWnity of properties would solve the semantic equation in (8.2) but only few of them are ‘conceptually natural’. Unfortunately, I have nothing substantial to contribute in this debate.
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The development of the English going to construction into a future tense form was, as we could clearly trace, not a simple shift in meaning from movement to Futurity. On the contrary, speakers attributed a fairly sophisticated meaning contribution to the b- going to construction, taking imminence, reference time R, event time E, and speech time S into account. The resulting construction allowed the making of a very speciWc kind of assertion. The resulting interpretation of going to, asserting the present imminence of a future eventuality or state, led to interesting diVerences between the will and going to future in if-then constructions. Again, we could witness how reanalysis determined the further uses of a new item in subtle respects. The detailed semantic analysis in Chapter 4 could explain these patterns. An alternative account would have to postulate that such diVerentiations arose by further communicative conventions about the use of going to in contrast to will. While such accidental conventions are of course possible, an analysis of the rise of going to future that can automatically predict further data like the use of going to in conditional constructions oVers an interesting alternative. The reanalysis of selbst led from a word which denoted the concept of core of some periphery, self to a word that relies on the notion of scalarity, but, again, the speciWc meanings of old and new term are much more Wne grained than a mere evocation of these universal notions. Importantly, the shift can only be fully understood once we make explicit use of the semantics and pragmatics of focus, tracing its impact under old and new construction. The advantages of the resulting account are of a very unobtrusive nature. The treatment of the reanalysis of selbst that was proposed in Chapter 6 goes beyond previous proposals insofar as it can explain why many things did not happen. The development of selbst is particularly striking in that it occurs in a discrete step from selbst ‘self ’ to selbst ‘even’ without any intermediate stages. In this case, a detailed, truth conditional account is advantageous in that it allows us to explain the self-evident. The question ‘why did we never witness any intermediate stages in the use of selbst?’ was never before addressed because there is an overarching shared intuition among linguists that this change will automatically lead from an item that shows all characteristics of old selbst to a new item that shows all characteristics of new selbst without intermediate phases.3 The main objection against previous accounts hence 3 It should be clear that I do not want to state that the only pathway of semantic developent for self leads to even—clearly falsiWed by examples in many languages. I should write more precisely that in the given onset contexts for reanalysis, with the implications in question and the problematic presuppositions that were required by the older item, the development from old to new selbst had to occur in one step.
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consists in the observation that they would in principle allow for intermediate stages, a possibility that was suppressed by the interpreting eye of the scholarly reader. The development of lauter moved from an adjective denoting ‘purity’ into a determiner-like item shifting between ‘many’ and ‘only’. The case demonstrates that the mental lexicon can contain more than a simple choice of items that can easily be classiWed into a small number of semantic and syntactic primitives. A closer look into the data in both Early Modern High German and Modern High German showed that a quite sophisticated grammatical and semantic analysis of lauter is required in order to capture its mixed nature between adjective and generalized quantiWer. The analysis, moreover, reveals the meaning change of lauter to be small. The dramatic diVerences between older and newer item are accounted for in an indirect fashion by making use of indexical parameters. The eventual analysis could do justice to the intricate empirical facts about lauter, among which the most striking one was the stranding prohibition for lauter; other, more subtle data turned out to pattern well with the Wnal account. It is surprising that German has maintained this item of a double-faced nature over several centuries without speakers undertaking further steps that would bring the word closer towards simpler determiners like ‘many’ or ‘only’. I hypothesized that the stability of modern lauter rests on Keenan and Stavi’s semantic universal of conservativity. This hypothesis lends indirect support to a treatment of semantic change under reanalysis in terms of truth conditional semantics: if a universal that results from the logical properties of natural language semantics proves relevant for semantic reanalysis, we can conclude that we operate at an appropriate level of semantic representation. In summary, I propose that sophisticated patterns in the data like those listed here deserve close attention, rather than being classed as accidents in sociolinguistic spread. They stand in favour of the assumption that speakers at all times had speciWc denotations of all items under scrutiny. This is supported by the fact that a detailed semantic representation of Pre-meaning, semantic reanalysis, and resulting Post-meaning could explain such Wne patterns rather than being challenged by them. The tools of truth conditional semantics appear a gain, even when addressing words that have long ceased to be part of the active language use of living speakers.
8.3 Gradualness as an Epiphenomenon We still have to address the undeniable fact that in the investigation of language change, the source texts oVer a picture of gradual meaning change.
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How can this be reconciled with the discrete notion of change that was defended here? One prominent way to integrate discrete changes with gradual shifts was Wrst proposed by Timberlake (1977) and has recently gained renewed interest (see e.g. Andersen and others, in Andersen 2001c). The authors propose that one discrete change can open up the space of potential uses of some given item while the speaker community will not immediately explore this space in full depth. In the decades after a discrete change, we witness actualization of the potential uses. Actualization in its simpler sense could just mean that more and more uses exemplify more and more possible patterns until the source texts do justice to the full range of possibilities of the new item. The gradual loss of sortal restrictions poses one prominent example for this kind of process. The development of going to can serve as an illustration (as already pointed out in Hopper and Traugott 1993 and followed by the monograph of Krug 2000). As soon as the construction no longer denotes a movement, speakers are free to combine it with . . .
activities where the subject does not need to move in order to perform them; immovable subjects (‘the house is going to collapse’); expletive subjects.
It is plausible, and the data conWrm this expectation, that the speakers will make use of these possibilities in a gradual manner. Anderson pointed out that the actualization process can itself be guided by further principles of change. He speciWcally suggests that markedness vs. nonmarkedness is a factor that drives actualization (Andersen 2001b). I will not explore this line of thought here. Instead, let me draw attention to another aspect in the representation of meaning where context dependency plays a role. In recent years, the notion of semantic underspeciWcation has gained importance in semantic research. It had become clear, speciWcally in computer implementation, that the lavish numbers of readings for some given word might oVer semantic preciseness, but at the price of making any practical implementation unfeasible. A deeper worry concerns the fact that high numbers of semantically closely related homonyms will also miss important cognitive abilities of human speakers in managing lexical knowledge. In answer to this problem, various formats to represent semantic underspeciWcation were proposed. Accounts range from Bierwisch’s (1987, 1989) two-level semantics to Pustejovsky’s generative lexicon (Pustejovsky 1995) but among those major theories, a well-known practice was rediscovered and approved as another way to integrate a reliable meaning core with
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context-dependent parts of meaning: the use of indexical parameters that refer to speciWc circumstances in an utterance situation. Such parameters were brieXy illustrated in Chapter 3, in particular in connection with the semantics of adjectives. More importantly, however, they also played a major role in the semantic investigation of items-under-change. I made use of context-dependent conceptual shells like Imminence (going-to future), Entourage (selbst, older sense), Relevant Entity (lauter, newer sense), and Salient Scale (various places) in semantic representation. These parameters become instantiated by context in an actual utterance situation. For instance, if I utter or interpret a sentence containing the English intensiWer himself, I will have to decide on the nature of the relevant core–periphery structure that is intended in this utterance. It might be the central king and his peripheral people, it might be the central father and the peripheral family, it might be the protagonist and the peripheral other characters, and so on depending on the context. Such contextual parameters play an important role when it comes to integrating individual reanalyses of single utterances into one coherent semantic value of the newly emerging futurate going to. All such reanalyses must have had in common that the speaker reported on some future activity, and that this future activity was in some sense already under way. Unlike will and shall, constructions with going to are tied to situations where the subject is already actively preparing some future event. While the original mode of preparation consisted in a movement, the modes of preparation that might have been intended in early uses of the new sense of the construction were speciWc in each single case, but not tied together by some basic level notion like ‘to go’. The meta-property of being Imminent in some sense oVered a convenient way to cover various kinds of preparation that speakers wanted to refer to in the early Post-stage of futurate going to.
8.4 The Principle of Avoiding Pragmatic Overload I will now turn to the Pre-stage, and in particular to the Wnal phase before the turning point is reached. As we know from earlier studies, this phase is characterized by continuing pragmatic enrichment of the construction under scrutiny. Generalized invited inferences will conventionally add information to the literal content until speakers feel inclined to redistribute the semantic labour and reconstruct former conventional implicatures as new parts of literal content: reanalysis has taken place. We can often only speculate about the factors that increase the speaker’s inclination to reanalyse. In historical investigations, this inclination seems
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beyond the observable data. One solution might lie in a shift of attention from historical change to contemporary change. Janda (2001: 316) pointed out that ‘we should in principle be able to gain more insight into contemporary linguistic processes than into ancient or even medieval ones, let alone prehistoric changes’ and concludes that ‘we are most sorely missing . . . sociolinguistically oriented studies which would compare the ways in which elements apparently undergoing grammaticalization are used by speakers vis-a`-vis those on whom they model their behaviour’. Such demands are based on the ‘uniformitarian principle’ formulated by Labov (1972: 275) which assumes that the forces that drive and instigate language change today are of the same kind as those that were responsible for earlier changes. Janda advocates this principle, reporting on its usefulness in other historical disciplines like palaeontology or geophysics. The present work oVers some speciWc ideas about the kind of present-day constructions and utterances that we should investigate. We attempted to specify the meaning and pragmatic behaviour of the items under investigation in as detailed and explicit a way as possible. One clear advantage of this programme is that if we have detailed and explicit ideas about what some expression does mean, we likewise will have explicit and detailed ideas about what an expression can not contribute to a given proposition. It follows that we can arguably spot uses of a construction-under-change where the speaker charges the sentence with a pragmatic overload. The speaker wants to convey a certain piece of information with a given sentence. The information does in fact arise as the net sum of literal content plus all kinds of pragmatic inferencing, but in a ‘costly’ fashion. The hearer, at this point, might wonder whether the speaker indeed intended these costly pragmatic inferences or whether the speaker was already beyond reanalysis. Let me recapitulate two examples that illustrated the notion of pragmatic overload. When looking for turning point uses of selbst in Chapter 6, we investigated sentences like the following (English counterpart). (8.3)
. . . The birds selbst (themselves/even) Xee into the deserts.
OYcially, the author knew older selbst ¼ ‘themselves’ and nothing else. Stylistically, the author wanted to make a superlative statement, describing some very sad state of aVairs. In the context as well as in our stereotyped knowledge about birds, they are not the core in a periphery of living beings that desert a place. An English sentence like the birds themselves Xed would evoke the question the birds, rather than who else? It was problematic to establish the proper conceptual background/presuppositions for the intended rhetorical Wgure. Yet the intended information content may be achieved by two extra pragmatic steps. First, we need an instance of bridging, i.e. taking
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the property ‘to Xee into the deserts’ as a special instance for a more general, intended background property. Plausibly, this property is something like ‘to show fear’. And second, the hearer needs to accommodate an uncommon core–periphery structure. The ‘birds’ are presented as the core of a periphery of other animals, and this core is least inclined to show sorrow. The birds are, so to speak, the angst-free animals par excellence. This is not altogether implausible. The Bible, for instance, conceptualizes the bird as one animal that never cares, and is yet under the shelter of God. But still—the perspective of viewing this world of sorrow from a bird’s-eye view (in the literal sense) is not very salient. In other words: the core–periphery structure can be accommodated, but this accommodation looks costly and unnatural. The hearer will see the intended interpretation, but will at the same time weigh the costs of the pragmatic inferencing against the chances that the speaker meant to convey the same information in a diVerent manner, namely by using selbst in the Post-reanalysis sense (‘even’). The pragmatic overload of the sentence in the old language use suggests a simpler semantic analysis. A second instance of pragmatic overload seems to have played a role in the reinterpretation of lauter. Recall that the Wrst problematic uses of lauter that paved the way for the word in its modern sense followed the pattern in (8.3). (8.3)
. . . there are no saints, but lauter (only?/merely?) devils on this list.
At the time, lauter with count noun plurals was licensed in the sense of ‘mere’ while ‘only/purely’ uses were restricted to mass nouns. In this example, the problematic presupposition concerns the appropriate scale that licenses the use of ‘mere’ (lauter). The use of ‘mere’ refers not so much to a scale but rather to an opposition of two alternative properties. The two properties are ranked as one superior, and one inferior (¼ mere). In order to be comparable in this way, however, the two properties need to be of the same kind. One can compare a medical doctor to a mere quack, one can compare butter to mere margarine, one can compare a full professor to a mere teaching assistant, or real gold to mere fake gold. But a devil is not a saint of a minor quality but an altogether diVerent thing. A lauter sentence equivalent to (8.3) requires an implausible, hence costly, presupposition accommodation. The hearer will see the intended interpretation which rests on the presupposition that saints and devils are things of a common kind. The hearer will weigh the costs of this implausible accommodation against the chances that the speaker meant to convey the same information in a diVerent manner, namely by using lauter in the Post-reanalysis sense (‘only’ with count nouns). The pragmatic overload of the sentence in the old language use suggests a simpler semantic analysis.
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Interestingly, such a Principle of Avoiding Pragmatic Overload has a classical precursor in the literature on syntactic reanalysis. Lightfoot (1979) in his seminal investigation of the English modal system suggested that syntactic analysis be guided by the Transparency Principle. SpeciWcally, he proposed that at a certain period, the complex syntactic structures that had been necessary to support (pre-)modal constructions in the older grammar of English were replaced by much simpler syntactic trees that hosted the newly emerging functional category of modals. Lightfoot considered this as a process between speaker generations. New generations of language learners were pruning, so to speak, the over-complex grammatical structures of an older stage of syntax. The diVerence between Lightfoot’s process and the one proposed here lies in the fact that the Principle of Avoiding Pragmatic Overload is a principle that operates in the interpretation of speciWc utterances. It is part of the interpretation process of adults. Children arguably lack both the world knowledge as well as communicative experience to rely on pragmatic inferencing. The late acquisition of pragmatic skills has often been pointed out in the literature (e.g. Noveck 2001). I therefore assume that language change driven by the avoidance of pragmatic overload is typically an adult process in the command of adult speakers and operates throughout their whole life. This view is compatible with a principles and parameters theory of language acquisition, as the changes under dispute here will only concern the lexical entries of single words or constructions. Lexical changes in adult language are a well-attested phenomenon and as such unproblematic (see Lightfoot 1991, and earlier Andersen 1973).
8.5 A Post Scriptum on Bleaching Semantic reanalysis is typically (though not necessarily) tied to instances of language change by grammaticalization. The concept of semantic reanalysis as it was developed in the present work may be of help to elucidate the nature of the oldest and yet most puzzling notion of meaning change under grammaticalization, namely bleaching. Remember our conclusion in section 2.2: ‘bleaching’ is an overwhelmingly convincing metaphor for the kind of meaning changes that we observe in grammaticalization but an extremely elusive theoretical notion. What is bleaching, and why are meanings that result from grammaticalization frequently so pale? The present study attempted to clarify the process in which morphosyntactic structure and semantic content undergo changes in an inseparably intertwined manner. Structural reanalysis only makes sense as long as it is mirrored by appropriate semantic reanalysis. Vice versa however, reorganizations of
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morphosyntactic structure oVer us access to possible (and even required) denotata that had no previous independent conceptual status. Consider, one last time, the target meaning of b- going to that resulted from reanalysis. This target meaning is functional in nature. It contributes information about indexical parameters (R, S, E), temporal and modal relations between R, S, and E, and the way in which further parts of the sentence will be combined with this partial description of a state of aVairs. This cognitive object is hardly of a kind that would allow ostensive introduction. It is not something one can point at and say ‘let us call this thing going to’. This seems to hold for function words in general. In an earlier attempt to apply the techniques of formal semantics to grammaticalization, Kai von Fintel characterized functional words as the compositional glue of sentences (Fintel 1995: 182 f.). He observes that in order to combine the meanings of content words, ‘what is needed is a functional meaning, a higher type meaning that takes the . . . low-level types and results in a normal sentence meaning’ (i.e. a proposition). Without functional words, von Fintel adduces, sentence interpretation would be of the kind that we observe in early stages of language acquisition, in pidgins, in patients who suVer from agrammatism, or in telegram style. Von Fintel rightly states that all these have in common that they are not natural languages in the full sense of the word. His picture of functional items as the semantic glue of sentences indeed captures an important aspect of functional words.4 Evidently, the denotation of a function word—something that can glue together other meanings—can never become salient on a purely presentational basis. Denotations of function words only make sense at all if speakers already know some words that they need to glue together. Given this semantic characterization of functional words, we can turn to the process of creating functional words, i.e. grammaticalization. The denotata of function words are of a kind which presupposes the existence of content words. The denotatum of a function word only makes sense against a background where individuals not only possess concepts (an ability that we presumably share with all higher mammals) but also have a shared practice of referring to concepts by certain sequences of sounds and where they use these sound-concept pairs in the sense of a linguistic signe. Only when individuals can already use sounds in order to volitionally evoke concepts in hearers can they see the need to give
4 I would not take up his further proposal for a semantic characterization of ‘pale meaning’. In particular the alleged permutation invariance seems too strong, given that functional words can still hold semantic contents like imminence relations, cause–eVect relations, etc. It is not entirely clear how such relations would be aVected by permutations of the model domain.
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instructions to the hearers as to how to combine concepts into a proposition. Only when certain contextually conventionalized modes of combination have been established in a (proto)speaker community does it become possible to pair a certain mode of combination with some sound pattern—create, in other words, the Wrst function words. If we take this picture seriously, we will predict that the Wrst instance of grammaticalization required a previous pidgin-like language. In other words: anybody can hold a concept—but only members of a community of speaking animals can master the denotata of function words, the glue of language, of items that result from grammaticalization. It is exactly this fact that causes the ubiquitous and unchallenged impression that semantic change in grammaticalization is ‘bleaching’. The meaning of function words is ‘pale’ in the sense that it contributes instructions about how to combine other meanings. Such denotata are ‘abstract’ in the sense that they can only become conceptually salient once there are already a certain number of linguistic signs available. Function words do denote something, but their denotations cannot be grasped without pre-existing language. They are about how to handle other concepts, not how to deal with the world. Semantic reanalysis oVers a freeway to cast the modes of semantic composition into a linguistic form. As a result of semantic reanalysis, speciWc modes of composition can be tied to the sounds of words. The analytical powers endorsed in the human language faculty are essential to natural language as a rich, Xexible, and precise tool for communication.
Appendix Definitions from Logic and Model Theory This Appendix offers a brief list of relevant definitions from logic and model theory which might be useful in reading the book. They are intended as a reminder rather than a readable introduction to predicate and higher order type logic.
A.1 Languages L of first order predicate logic In order to build a language L of first order predicate logic, we must choose (i) a finite or infinite set of constant terms {c0 , c1 , c2 , c3 , . . . } 1 (ii) a finite or infinite set of relation {R1 1 , R 1 2 , R1 3 , . . . , R2 1 , R2 2 , . . . , R3 1 , R 3 2 , . . . }
terms
of
a
given
arity
(iii) a finite or infinite set of function terms of {f 1 1 , f 1 2 , f 1 3 , . . . , f 2 1 , f 2 2 , . . . , f 3 1 , f 3 2 , . . . } Moreover, we have an infinite set of individual variables available: {x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 , . . . }
given
arity
Definition 1: individual terms of L Each individual variable xi is an individual term. Each constant term cj is an individual term. If t1 , t2 , . . . , tn are individual terms and fin is a function term of arity n, then f n i (t1 , . . . , tn ) is an individual term. Definition 2: formulae of L If s,t are individual terms of L, then s ¼ t is an atomic formula of L If t1 , . . . , tn are individual terms of L and Ri is a relation term of arity n, then Ri (t1 , . . . , tn ) is an atomic formula of L. If f and c are formulae of L, then :f, f ^ c, f _ c, f ! c, and f $ c are formulae of L. If x is an individual variable, and f is a formula of L, then 9xf and 8xf are formulae of L. 1
Finite may also be zero.
Appendix
A.2
251
Interpretation of a first order language L relative to a model M
The definitions 1 and 2 only offer a procedure to build up meaningless terms. In order to decide about a ‘meaning’ of these terms, we need to bring them together with a model. Models are minimally restrictive in that they offer no own ‘contents’. Everything that is structurally of the right kind can become the interpretation of a constant term, a function term, a relation term. The following definition captures this notion: Definition 3: models for language L Let L be a first order language. A model M ¼ <M,I> for L consists of a finite or infinite set of individuals M, and an interpretation function I which does the following: (i) For each constant term c of L, I maps c on some element in M: I(c) 2 M. (ii) For each (n-ary) function term f of L, I maps f on some n-ary function over M: I(f) 2 MM...M . (iii) For each (n-ary) relation term R of L, I maps R onto some n-ary relation over M: I(R) M M . . . M. Definition 4: interpretation of L relative to model M and variable assignment g Let L be a first order language and M be a model for L. Let moreover g be a variable assignment over M (i.e. a function which for each variable x yields an element g(x)¼m in M). The evaluation V of terms is defined as follows: (i) For each variable x, V(x) :¼ g(x) (ii) For each constant term c, V(c) :¼ I(c) (iii) For complex individual terms V(f )(V(t1 ), . . . , V(tn ) )
f (t1 , . . . , tn ), V(f (t1 , . . . , tn ) ): ¼
If the interpretation of atomic expressions (variables, constants, relations, functions) in some given model is known, we can evaluate any formulae f of L in M relative to g. If f is true in M relative to variable assignment g, this is abbreviated as M j¼g f. The evaluation of complex formulae in M occurs recursively, following the rules in (i) to (ix): (i) Let f be an atomic formula t1 ¼ t2 for individual terms t1 , t2 t1 ¼ t2 holds true in M under g (briefly: M j¼ g t1 ¼ t2 ) iff V(t1 ) ¼ V(t2 ). (ii) Let f be an atomic formula Ri (t1 , . . . , tn ) for individual terms t1 , t2 , . . . and n-ary relation term Ri . Ri (t1 , . . . , tn ) holds true in M under g, briefly: M j¼ g Ri (t1 , . . . , tn ) iff < V(t1 ), . . . , V(tn ) >2 V(Ri ). (iii) Let f be a negated formula :c. M j¼ g : c iff not M j¼ g c. (iv) Let f be a conjunction c ^ z. M j¼ g c ^ z iff M j¼ g c and M j¼ g z
252
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(v) Let f be a disjunction c _ z. M j¼ g c _ z iff M j¼ g c or M j¼ g z (or both) (vi) Let f be an implication c ! z. M j¼ g c ! z iff M j¼ g : c or M j¼ g z (or both). (vii) Let f be a bi-implication c $ z. M j¼ g c $ z iff either both M j¼ g c and M j¼ g z or both M j¼ g : c and M j¼ g : z (viii) Let f be an existential quantification 9xc. M j¼ g 9xc iff there is a variable assignment g’ which coincides with g in all variables except (possibly) x, such that M j¼ g0 c (ix) Let f be a universal quantification 8xc. M j¼ g 8xc iff for all variable assignments g’ which coincide with g in all variables except x, M j¼ g0 c.
A.3 The logic of lambda abstraction Predicate logic in its ‘pure’ form does not yet allow us to reflect functional application and open arguments in a function or relation. Essentially, all functional application occurs in building terms of first order predicate logic (Def. 1). However, in natural language interpretation, we need to make use of functional objects and talk about open argument slots. Hence we are not only concerned with the evaluation of the truth or falsity of formulae, but want to use complex denotations. A first preparatory step is the introduction of a system of ‘labels’ (officially called types) that will later be ‘attached’ to terms of type logic (officially, the terms will carry their type as an index). The underlying intuition is that the type label of a term specifies whether this term denotes an individual, a function, a relation, a higher order function, etc. Definition 5: types We use the basic types e (for entitiy) and t (for truth value). These are types. If s, t are types, then (s, t) is also a type. Nothing else is a type. Let Type abbreviate the set of all types. Later definitions will settle the function of complex types (s, t) in an argument-left fashion. The label (s, t) will be attached to terms that denote ‘something which maps objects of type s onto objects of type t’. Definition 6: languages of (higher order) type logic A language L of higher order type logic rests on the following atomic expressions: (i) For each type a, L can have a finite or infinite set of constant terms of type a: {c a 0 , c a 1 , c a 2 , c a 3 , . . . } (ii) For each type a, L can have a finite or infinite set of variables of type a: {x a 0 , x a 1 , x a 2 , x a 3 , . . . }. Sometimes we use variable names xa , ya , za , . . . in order to avoid too many indices.
Appendix
253
Definition 7: terms of type logic for a given language L (i) All constants are terms of L. (ii) All variables are terms of L. (iii) If A is a term of type (s, t) and B is a term of type s, then A(B) is a term of type t (functional application). (iv) If A is a term of type t, and x is a variable of type s, then the expression lx(A) is of type (s, t) (lambda abstraction). (v) If A and B are of type t, then the following are also terms of type t: :A, A^B, A_B, A!B, and A$B (vi) If A is of type t and x is a variable (of any type), then the following are also terms of type t: 8x(A) and 9x(A). Nothing else is a term of L. Definition 8: models for a language of type logic A model M for a language L of type logic consists of a family of domains (Da )a2 Type . and a family of functions (Ia )a2 Type: with the following properties: (i) De is some non-empty set of individuals. Dt ¼ {0, 1} the set of truth values. s (ii) For all complex types (s, t) in Type, the domain D(s, t) ¼ DD the set of t all functions from Ds to Dt. (iii) All functions Ia , a 2 Type, are of the following kind: Ia maps all constant terms of type a into Da . Definition 9: evaluation of terms of L relative to a model M Languages of type logic contain not only formulae (i.e. things that can be true or false) but also terms that should be interpreted as functions and relations. Therefore, we do not use the support sign in type logic but evaulate terms in general with respect to a given model M and a variable assignment g. This is notated as ½½FM,g . Truth and falsity are mirrored by the values 0 and 1 in Dt . (i) ½½ca M,g ¼ Ia (ca ) for all constants ca of L. (ii) ½½x M,g ¼ g(c ) for all variables x of L. a
a
a
(iii) If A is a term of type (s, t) and B is a term of type s, then ½½A(B)M,g : ¼ ½½AM,g (½½BM,g ) (iv) If A is a term of type t, and x is a variable of type s, then ½½lx(A)M,g is the function that maps any element b in Dt to the value 0 ½½AM,g where g’ is the variable assignment that is like g except that g’(x) ¼ b. (v) If A and B are of type t, then we have the following evaluations in M: ½½:AM,g ¼ 1 iff ½½ A M,g ¼ 0 ½½A ^ BM,g ¼ 1 iff ½½AM,g ¼ 1 and ½½BM,g ¼ 1 ½½A _ BM,g ¼ 1 iff ½½AM,g ¼ 1 or ½½BM,g ¼ 1 ½½A ! BM,g ¼ 0 iff ½½AM,g ¼ 1 and ½½BM,g ¼ 0
254
Appendix (vi) If A is of type t and x is a variable (of any type), then the following evaluations apply: ½½9x(A)M, g ¼ 1 iff for at least one alternative variable assignment g’ which 0 is like g except for variable x, ½½AM, g ¼ 1. M, g ¼ 1 iff for every alternative variable assignment g’ which is like ½½8x(A) 0 g except for variable x, ½½AM, g ¼ 1.
Definitions 1 to 9 offer the formal backbone of the discussion of lambda terms and lambda abstraction in Chapter 3. Reversing the order of application to arguments: sometimes, we may wish to circumvent the first argument of a lambda term and instantiate only the second argument in the function. For instance, we might wish to instantiate y in the term lxly(x y ) with the integer 4 and get the function which maps each real number to its fourth power. We can do so in a series of three steps. First, we apply the function g to a variable instead of a fixed object. I will use the variable z to make the result visible:
(1) lxly(x y )(z) ¼ ly(z y ) Second, we apply the result to the intended value for y, in our case the number 4.
(2) ly(z y )(4) ¼ (z4 ) Third, we perform what is called lambda abstraction. We add the prefix lz to the term we have computed in (2):
(3) lz(z 4 ) The resulting term describes the function which maps each real number z to its fourth power z 4. If you wish, you can rename the variable z as x to make the term look more similar to the original term. This little exercise shows that the order of prospective arguments is fixed by the lambda term, but that this order can be circumvented.
Source Texts by Chapter Chapter 4 Alston, R. C. (ed.). 1969. English Linguistics 1500–1800. Menston: The Scolar Press Limited. (A collection of facsimile reprints.) Bodenstedt ¼ William Shakespeare’s dramatische Werke. 1867–72. Ed. F. Bodenstedt. Leipzig: Brockhaus. Burtlett, John. 1894. A Complete Concordance . . . of Shakespeare with a Supplementary Concordance of the Poems. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Burton, 1657. ¼ John T. Rutt (ed.). 1828. Diary of Thomas Burton: From 1656 to 1659, ed. and ill. with notes hist. and biog. by John T. Rutt. London: Colburn. CEECS 1: Corpus of early English correspondence sampler CEECS Sociolinguistics and Language History Project Team 1998, Dept. of English, University of Helsinki: Original Letters, Illustrative of English History; Including Numerous Royal Letters: From Autographs in the British Museum, and One or Two Other Collections. Vol. i, 2nd edn. by Henry Ellis. London: Arding, Triphook, and Lepard. 1825. Chancery English, 1438 ¼ John H. Fisher, Malcolm Richardson, and Jane L. Fisher (eds.). 1994. An Anthology of Chancery English. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Comoedia von der Ko¨nigin Esther und hoffa¨rtigen Haman. In Tittmann 1880: 3–44. Comoedia von dem verlornen Sohn. In Tittmann 1880: 45–73. Earle, 1628 ¼ A. S. West (ed.). 1897. John Earle, Microcosmography. Cambridge. English Prose Drama (Stanford University): plays between 1500 and 1660. Gryphius, Andreas. 1658. Absurda Comica oder Herr Peter Squenz. Schimpff¼Spiel. Reprint of the original edition 1663. (Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts 6.) Halle a.d.S.: Niemeyer, 1955. Huon of Burdeux, 1534 ¼ S. L. Lee (ed.). 1882. The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux Done into English by Sir John Bourchier, Loerd Berners, and Printed by Eynkyn de Worde about 1534 A.D., EETS, es XL, SLI. London: The Early English Text Society. King Alisaunder, early 14th century ¼ Fr. P. Magoun, Jr. (ed.). 1929. The Gestes of the Worthie King and Amperour, Alisaunder of Macedoine. Cambridge, Mass. Also ed. W. Skeat, EETS. Madox, 1582 ¼ Elizabeth Story Donno (ed.). 1976. An Elizabethan in 1582: The Diary of Richard Madox, Fellow of All Souls. London: Hakluyt Society. Monk of Evesham, 1482 ¼ Edward Arber (ed.). 1969. The Revelation to the Monk of Evesham. 1196. Carefully edited from the unique copy, now in the British Museum, of the edition printed by William de Machilinia about 1482. English Reprints 18. London: Edward Arber.
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Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. 2nd edn., prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weimer. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Poole, 1646. ¼ Joshua Poole, The English Accidence. In Alston 1969. Sachs, Hans. 1557. Eulenspiegel mit dem blauen Hosentuche und dem Bauern. In Edmund Goetze (ed.), Hans Sachs: Sa¨mtliche Fastnachtspiele in chronologischer Ordnung. Halle/Saale: Niemeyer: 1880–7. Shakespeare, William. 1599. Romeo and Juliet. Second Quarto, repr. in Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —— 1608. King Lear. Pied Bull Quarto, repr. in Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —— 1623. Measure for Measure. Folio version from 1623. Repr. in William Aldis Wright (ed.), The Works of William Shakespeare. London: Macmillan Press: 1894. Tieck and Schlegel ¼ Shakespeares Werke, trans. August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck (various editions available, here: Basel.: Hans Matter, Diogenes Verlag). Tittmann, Julius (ed.). 1880. Die Schauspiele der Englischen Komo¨dianten in Deutschland. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. Wieland ¼ Shakespeares Werke, trans. Christoph Martin Wieland, 1762–1766, ed. Hans and Johanna Radspieler. Zu¨rich: Haffmanns Verlag. Chapter 5 TL ¼ Tobler, Adolf, Lommatzsch, Erhard, and Christmann, Hans Helmut. 1925–76. Altfranzo¨sisches Wo¨rterbuch (Ba¨nde A–T). Stuttgart: Franz-Steiner-Verlag Wiesbaden. All unresolved abbreviations below are from Tobler-Lommatzsch. The main text leads to the respective passage in the dictionary. Alexandre ¼ Albe´ric de Pisanc¸on. c.1120. Le Roman d’Alexandre. Editions: Alexandre le ˆ ge, ed. P. Meyer. Paris, 1886. Digital Grand dans la litte´rature franc¸aise du Moyen A edition: Bibliotheca Augustana, www.fh-augsburg.de/ harsch/gallica/Chronologie/. Atre per. ¼ Anon. End 13th century. Der gefahrvolle Kirchhof, ed. F. Schirmer. Herrigs Archiv XLII, 1869. New edn. L’Aˆtre pe´rilleux: roman de la table ronde, ed. Brian Woledge. Les Classiques Franc¸ais du Moyen Aˆge 76. Paris: Champion, 1936. Auc ¼ Anon. 13th century. Aucassin et Nicolette, ed. H. Suchier. 7th edn. Paderborn, 1909. New edn. by Mario Roques. Les Classiques Franc¸ais du Moyen Aˆge 41. Paris: Champion, 1965. Barb. u. M. ¼ Fabliaux et contes des poe`tes franc¸ois des XI., XII., XIII., XIV. et XV. sie`cles, ed. etienne de Barbazan. New edn. by D. M. Me´on, Paris, 1808. Repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1976. Bat d’Alesch ¼ La Bataille d’Aleschans. Anon. 13 century. Guillaume d’Orange, chansons de geste. ed. W. J. A. Jonkbloet, The Hague, 1854. New edn. by Madeleine Tyssens. Paris: Champion, 2000.
Source Texts by Chapter
257
BCond. ¼ Dites et contes de Badouin de Conde´ et son fils Jean de Conde´. 13 century. Boussels: A. Scheler, 1866–7. Benedeit SBrendan ¼ The Anglo-Norman Voyage of St. Brendan by Benedeit, ed. E. G. R. Waters, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928. Brun de la Montagne ¼ Anon. 2nd half 14th century. Brun de La Montaigne, ed. P. Meyer, Paris, 1875. New edn. New York: Johnson Repr., 1966. Brut Arn ¼ Le Raman de Boot de Wace. c.1100–74. Ed. I. Arnold, 2 vols., Paris: SATF, 1938–40. Calvin, Jean. 1541. Institution de la religion chrestienne, ed. Abel Lefranc Text of the 1st French edn. 1541. Paris: Champion, 1911. —— 1550. Des scandales, ed. Olivier Fatio. Textes Litte´raires Franc¸ais 323. Geneva Droz, 1984. Canc¸ Guillelme ¼ Anon. 12th century. Canc¸on de. Guillelme, ed. W. Cloetta. Paris, 1906–11. Cent Nouvelles ¼ Anon. c.1456–67. Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, ed. Franklin P. Sweetser. Geneva: Droz, 1966. Chartier, Jean. 1422–50. Chronique de Charles VII, vol. iii, ed. Auguste Vallet de Viriville. Paris, Jannet, 1858. ChLy. ¼ Chre´tien de Troyes. Before 1190. Li Romans dou Chevalier du Lyon, ed. W. L. Holland. 3rd edn. Berlin, 1902. Ch. lyon ¼ Chre´tien de Troyes. Before 1190. Li Romans dou Chevalier du Lyon, ed. Foerster. Halle, 1887. Ch.lyon, CFMA ¼ Chre´tien de Troyes. Before 1190. Li Romans dou Chevalier du Lyon. Les Classiques Franc¸ais du Moyen Aˆge. Paris: Champion, 1999. Ch. Rol. ¼ Anon. c.1080. Chanson de Roland, ed. Th. Mu¨ller. 2nd edn. Go¨ttingen, 1878. Cont. Perc. R ¼ W. Roach (ed.), The Continuation of the Old French ‘Perceval’ of Chre´tien de Troyes, i: The First Continuation, Redaction of MSS TVD. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949. Cor. Lo. ¼ Anon. 12th century. Le Couronnement de Louis, ed. E. Langlois. Paris: Didot, 1888. Repr. New York: Johnson, 1968. En. ¼ Anon. 12th century. Eneas, ed. Salverda de Grave. Paris: Champion, 1929. Entree d’Esp ¼ Anon. 14th century. L’Entre´e d’Espagne: chanson de geste francoitalienne, ed. Antoine Thomas. Paris: Didot, 1968. Repr. New York: Johnson Repr. Erec ¼ Che´tien de Troyes. Before 1190. Erec et Enide, ed. W. Foerster. Halle, 1890. Escan ¼ Gerard de Amiens. 13th century. Der Roman von Escanor, ed. H. Michelant. Tu¨bingen, 1886. Escoufle ¼ Jean Renart. 13th century. L’Escoufle, ed. H. Michelant and P. Meyer. Paris, 1894. Ferg. ¼ Guillaume le clerc de Normandie. 13th century. Fergus, ed. Ernst Martin. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1872. Fol. Trist ¼ La Folie Tristan, ed. H. Morf, in Romania, 15 558, 1886. Fol. Tnst. B ¼ La Folie Tristan de Berne, ed. E. Hoepffner. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1934.
258
Source Texts by Chapter
Froissart, Jean. c.1373–1400. Chroniques, Boch I (Manuscrit d’Amiens), iii: 1346–1369. ed. George T. Giller. Geneva, 1992. Gaufr. ¼ Gaufrey, Chansons de geste: publie´e pour la premie`re fois d’apre`s le manuscrit unique de Montpellier, ed. Franc¸ois Guessard and Franc¸ois A. Chabaille. Paris, 1859. New edn. Nendeln: Kraus, 1966. GCoins ¼ Gautier de Coincy. Before 1236. Les Miracles de la Sainte Vierge, traduits et mis en vers par Gautier de Coincy. Paris: Poquet, 1857. Helinant lV ¼ Helinant, Monk of Froidmont, 1269/70. Les Vers de la mort, ed. Fr. Wulff and Em. Walberg, Paris, 1905. JBruyant ¼ Le Chemin de Povrete´ et de Richesse. In Jehan Bruyant. 1393. Le Me´nagier de Paris. Paris: La Socie´te´ des Bibliophiles Franc¸ois, 1846. Joinv. ¼ Jean Sire de Joinville. 1309. Histoire de la vie de saint Louis, ed. N. de Wailly. Paris, 1868. Jourd. Bl. ¼ Jourdains de Blaivies. 13th century. Amis et Amiles, ed. C. Hofmann. Erlangen, 1852. La Sale ¼ Antoine de La Sale. 1456. Jehan de Saintre´, ed. Jean Misrahi and Charles A. Knudson. Geneva, 1965. La Tour Landry ¼ Chevalier de la Tour Landry. 1371/2. Le Livre pour l’enseignement de ses filles, ed. Anatole de Montaiglon. Paris, 1854. Mahom ¼ Alexandre du Ponts. 1258. Le Roman de Mahomet. ed. F. Michel and J. T. Reinaud. Paris, 1831. Maistre Pierre Pathelin ¼ Anon. c.1460–74. Maistre Pierre Pathelin. 2nd edn. rev. Richard T. Holbrook. Paris, 1956. Marguerite de Navarre. Before 1549 (pub. 1558). L’Heptame´ron, ed. Le Roux de Lincy and Anatole de Montaiglon. Paris, 1880. M.Aym. ¼ Anon. End 12th century. La Mort Aymeri de Narbonne, ed. J. Curaye Du Parc. Paris: Didot, 1884. Repr. Socie´te´ des Anciens Textes Franc¸ais. New York: Johnson: 1966. MFceFa ¼ Marie de France. Mid-12th–early 13th century. Fabeln, ed. K. Warnke. Halle, 1898. MGar ¼ Anon. c.12th century. La Mort de Garin le Loherain, ed. E´. Du Me´ril. Paris, 1862. Miracles de Notre Dame ¼ Gautier de Coinci. Before 1236. Miracles de Notre Dame par personnages, ed. G. Paris and U. Robert. Paris, 1876–1883. Repr. ed. Lauri Lindgren. Helsinki, 1963. Mon. Guill. ¼ Anon. c.1160/80. Le Moniage Guillaume. In Wilhelmszyklus, ed. W. Cloetta. Paris, 1906–11. Noe¨l du Fail. 1548. Les Baliverneries. In Pierre Jourda (ed.), Conteurs franc¸ais du XVI sie`cle. Paris, 1965: 669–81. Pe`l.Charl. ¼ Anon. End 11th century. Le Pe`lerinage de Charlemagne. In Auguste ˆ ge (IXe–XVe sie`cles): Paris: Ancienne Librairie Rochette (ed.), Anthologie du Moyen A Poussielgue, de Gigord, 1912: 86 ff.
Source Texts by Chapter
259
Perc. H. ¼ Chre´tien de Troyes. Before 1190. Perceval le Gallois ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. Charles Potvin. Mons, 1865–71. Repr. Geneva: Slatkine; Le Roman de Perceval on Le Conte du Graal, ed. K. Busby. Tu¨bingen: Niemeyer, 1993. Rainouart ¼ Anon. c.1200. Moniage Rainouart, ed. Paola Bianchi de Vecchi. Collana di filologia romanza 2. Perugia: Ed. Scientifiche Italiane, 1980. RBlois I ¼ Robert von Blois. 13th century. Sa¨mmtliche Werke, vol. i, ed. J. Ulrich. Berlin, 1889–95. RCambr ¼ Raoul de Cambrai. c.1180. Chanson de geste, ed. P. Meyser and A. Longnon. Paris, 1882. Renart ¼ Anon. 1175–1250. Le Roman de Renart, ed. Mario Roques. Paris: Champion, 1951–63. Roman d’Alexandre ¼ Anon. 1185. Ed. E. C. Armstrong et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1937. Digital version by Stephen M. Wight. www.fh-augsburg.de/
harsch/augusta.html. Rich ¼ Anon. 13th century. Richars li Biaus, ed. W. Foerster. Vienna, 1874. New edn. by Anthony J. Holden. Les Classiques Franc¸ais du Moyen Aˆge 106. Paris: Champion, 1983. ˆ ge, IXe–XVe sie`cles. Paris: de Gigord. Rochette, Auguste. 1912. Anthologie du Moyen A Roman de la Rose ¼ Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. c.1230. Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Fe´lix Lecoy. Paris: Champion, 1965–70. Rom. u. Past ¼ Altfranzo¨sische Romanzen und Pastourellen des 12. und 13. Jh, ed. Karl Bartsch. Leipzig, 1870. Repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967. Rou III ¼ Maistre Waces. c.1100–74. Roman de Rou de des ducs de Normandie, ed. H. Andresen. Heilbronn, 1877–79. S. d’Angl. ¼ Ogier d’Anglure. 1395. Le Saint Voyage de Jherusalem du Seigneur d’Anglure, ed. F. Bonnardot and A. Longnon, Paris, 1878. SThom. W ¼ Garnier de Pont Sainte-Maxence. 12th century. La Vie de saint Thomas, ed. C. Hippeau. Paris, 1859. Tris. Be´r. ¼ Pierre Jonin Be´roul. 2nd half of 13 century. Le Roman de Tristan, ed. E. Muret. Paris, 1903. Tristan et Ysuet ¼ Thomas d’Angleterre. c.1170. Tristan et Ysuet. Digital edn. at the Bibliotheca Augustana, following the printed edn. Tristan et Isolt, ed. C. MarchelloNizia. Paris, 1995. Troie ¼ Benoit de Sainte-More. 12th century. Le Roman de Troie, ed. A. Joly, Paris, 1870–1. VGreg. A ¼ La Vie de saint Gre´goire le Grand. 1216. Trans. Fr. Anger, ed. P. Meyer, in Romania, 12 (1883). Villeh ¼ Henri de Valenciennes. End 13th century. Histoire de l’empereur Henry. In N. de Wailly (ed.), La Conqueˆte de Constantinopole par Geoffroi de Ville-Hardouin avec la continuation de Henri de Valenciennes. Paris, 1872. I. Ys. ¼ Ysopet I. Fables ine´dites des XIIe, XIIIe, et XIVe sie`cles et fables de Lafontaine, vol. i, ed. A. C. M. Robert and Jean de La Fontaine. Paris: Cabin, 1825.
260
Source Texts by Chapter
II. Ys. ¼ Ysopet II. Fables inde´dites des XIIe, XIIIe, et XIVe sie`cles et fables de Lafontaine, vol. ii, ed. A. C. M. Robert and Jean de LaFontaine. Paris: Cabin, 1825. Chapter 6 Adelung, Johann Christoph. 1781/1977. Deutsche Sprachlehre. Reprint of the 1781 edition. Berlin and Hildesheim: Olms. Grimm, Johann, and Grimm, Wilhelm. 1905. Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch. vol. x.1. Leipzig: S. Hirzel Verlag. Searched texts in ‘Projekt Gutenberg’ corpus (PG; version 2001): appr. time before 1639 before 1639 before 1640 1650 before 1653 before 1655 1657 before 1659 1661 1663 1667 1667 1675 before 1676 before 1679 before 1689
Author/work Martin Opitz 46 poems, Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey (1624), Zlatna Abraham von Bibran poems Paul Fleming poems Andreas Gryphius Leo Arminius (play) Georg Rudolf Weckherlin poems Friedrich von Logau four poems Andreas Gryphius Cardenio und Celinde (play) Simon Dach poems Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein Cleopatra (tragedy) Andreas Gryphius Horribilicribifax deutsch (play) Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen Historie vom keuschen Joseph (prose fiction) Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen Der Abentheuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (prose fiction) Andreas Silesius Cherubinischer Wandersmann (prose) Paul Gerhard songs Christian Hoffman von Hoffmanswaldau poems Quirinus Kuhlmann Gedicht auf Opitz (poem to Opitz)
Source Texts by Chapter 1683 1696/7 1703 1714
before 1721 before 1723 1725 1731 1757 1778
261
Christian Weise Masaniello (play) Christian Reuter Schelmuffsky (prose fiction) Abraham a Santa Clara Wunderlicher Traum von einem großen Narrennest (prose) Fabeln Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibnitz Monadologie (philosophical text, trans by the contemporary Heinrich Ko¨hler) Christian Friedrich Hunold Die scho¨ne Kaufmannsfrau (prose fiction) Johann Christian Gu¨nther 51 poems Christian Friedrich Weichmann Adeliger Student (short story, newspaper) Johann Gottfried Schnable Die Insel Felsenburg (prose fiction) Christian Fu¨rchtegott Gellert Gottes Macht und Vorsehung (poem) Johann Jakob Bodmer Odoardo Galotti, Vater der Emilia (play)
Chapter 7 Corpus Gloning, 1350–1700: Glo 1. Das Buch von guter Speise (c.1350). Reprinted as Hans Hajek (ed.), Das buoch von guoter spise. Aus der Wu¨rzburgMu¨nchener Handschrift. Berlin, 1958. Glo 2. Anton Birlinger (ed.), Ein alemannisches Bu¨chlein von guter Speise. 15th century. In Sitzungsberichte der Ko¨niglich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Mu¨nchen. Phil.-hist. Klasse. Vol. ii. Munich, 1865. Glo 3. Das Kochbuch des Meisters Eberhard. 15th century. Repr. in A. Feyl (ed.), Das Kochbuch Meister Eberhards. Diss. Freiburg i.B., 1963. Glo 4. Mittelniederdeutsches Kochbuch. 15th century. Printed as Hans Wiswe (ed.), Ein mittelniederdeutsches Kochbuch des 15. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch, 37 (1956), 19–55. Glo 5. Heinrich Mu¨nsinger, Regimen sanitatis in fluxu catarrhali ad pectus. 15th century. Printed as G. Eis (ed.), Heinrich Mu¨nsingers ‘Regimen sanitatis in fluxu catarrhali ad pectus’, Forschungen zur Fachprosa. Bern and Munich, 1971: 81–90. (Manuscript of the second half of 15th century.) Glo 6. Ein Kochbuch aus dem Archiv des Deutschen Ordens. Anon., late 15th century. Reprinted in H. Gollub (ed.), ‘Aus der Ku¨che der deutschen Ordensritter’, Prussia, 31 (1935), 118–24. ‘Nach der Schrift zu urteilen ko¨nnte dieses anscheinend a¨lteste Kochbuch Ostpreußens in der 2. Ha¨lfte des 15. Jahrhunderts entstanden sein’ (Gollub, p. 118).
262
Source Texts by Chapter r
Glo 7. Das Weinbuch im Codex Donaueschingen 787, fo. 181v and fo. 209 –211v. Anon., c.1500. Repr. Roswitha Ankenbrand, Das Pelzbuch des Gottfried von Franken. ¨ berlieferung und zur Nachfolge der mittelalUntersuchungen zu den Quellen, zur U terlichen Gartenliteratur. Diss. Heidelberg, 1970: 114 ff. Glo 8. Berthilde Danner, Alte Kochrezepte aus dem bayrischen Inntal. Ostbairische Grenzmarken, 12 (1970), 118–28. (¼ Cod. 793 of the Donaueschinger Hofbibliothek, v fos. 27v–28 and 96r–98r, 15th–16th century.) Glo 9. H. Mu¨ller, Kochrezepte aus dem 16. Jahrhundert. Rheinisch-westfa¨lische Zeitschrift fu¨r Volkskunde, 14 (1967), 83–6. (Mid-16th century.) Glo 10. Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin. c.1553. Repr. ed. Hugo Stopp trans. Ulrike Giessmann. Germanische Bibliothek, ns 4, Texte. Heidelberg: Universita¨tsverlag C. Winter, 1980. Glo 11. Hans Dernschwams Bericht u¨ber Erna¨hrungsgewohnheiten in der Tu¨rkey, Ungarn usw. 16th century. Hans Dernschwam’s report on 16th century food, foodways, and cookery in Turkey, Hungary, etc. In Hans Dernschwam’s Tagebuch einer Reise nach Konstantinopel und Kleinasien (1553/5). Reprinted version after the original in the Fugger-Archiv ed. Franz Babinger. Studien zur Fugger-Geschichte 7. Munich and Leipzig, 1923: 123–31. Glo 12. Koch vnd Kellermeisterey. 1566. Koch vnd Kellermeisterey j von allen Speisen vnd Getrencken j viel guter heimlicher Ku:enste j auch wie man Latwergen j Salsen j Confect j Conseruen j vnd Einbeytzungen machen j von mancherley Fru¨chten j Blumen j Kreutern vnd Wurtzelen. Einem jeden im Hauß gar notwendig vnd nu¨tzlich zugebrauchen. Frankfurt am Main: Thomam Rebart, 1556 M.D.LXVI. (Partial edition of the recipes (fos. A1a to G3a of the original printed edn.). Glo 13. Balthasar Staindl, EJN sehr Ku¨nstlichs vnd nutzlichs Kochbu:och 1569. Glo 14. Marx Rumpolt, Ein new Kochbuch, Frankfurt a.M. 1581. Glo 15. Samuel Dilbaum, Weinbu¨chlein. 1584. Repr. ed. A. Birlinger. Alemannia, 10 (1882), 274–78. Electronic version corrected after microfilm copy of an exemplar in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. Glo 16. Ein Koch- Und Artzney-Buch. Gra¨tz: Bey denen Widmanstetterischen Erben, 1686, pp. 1–118 (¼ recipe part). Luther’s works: Index Verborum. Martin Luther’s German Writings. Electronic concordance, compiled under the direction of Heinz Bluhm and Keith H. Morehouse. Available at http:// luther.bc.edu/default.html. WA ¼ Martin Luthers Werke j Martin Luther.—Kritische Gesamtausgabe (1966 ff.) Weimar: Bo¨hlau. (‘Weimar Edition’)
Other texts: Till Eulenspiegel, ed. Richard Benz after the oldest preserved printed edns., corrected according to the ed. of 1519. Jena: Diederichs, 1912.
Source Texts by Chapter
263
Till Eulenspiegel. Ein kurzweiliges Buch von Till Eulenspiegel aus dem Lande Braunschweig, wie er sein Leben vollbracht hat: 96 seiner Geschichten. ed. Hermann Bote and Siegfried H. Sichtermann. Frankfurt am Main: Insel-Verlag, 1978. Referenced or used corpora CEECS ¼ Corpus of early English correspondence sampler CEECS (C) Sociolinguistics and Language History Project Team 1998, Dept. of English, University of Helsinki: Original Letters, Illustrative of English History; Including Numerous Royal Letters: From Autographs in the British Museum, and One or Two Other Collections. Vol. i, 2nd edn. by Henry Ellis. London: Arding, Triphook, and Lepard, 1825. Corpus Gloning: private collection of electronic texts, collected by Thomas Gloning. Available at http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/ gloning. Full references see above in section ‘Chapter 7’. Drama Corpus ¼ Shakespeare Corpus. 1989. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (eds.), William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Electronic Edition for the IBM PC. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama Corpus. 1980. Louis Ule and T. Howard Hill (compilers). Oxford: Oxford Text Archive. EEPF ¼ Chadwyck’s Early English Prose Fiction: http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk/. Frantext: www.inalf.fr/_ns/atilf.htm or www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/databases/ TLF/ Gutenberg Corpus, version 2001 on CD. ABC.de Internet-Dienste Hille&Partner, Hamburg. Actualized version: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/. Helsinki Corpus: http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/HC/INDEX.HTM. Stanford Library Drama Corpus: internal corpus of English Drama at Stanford University.
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Index Abraham a Sancta Clara 181 absolute meanings 32 accent 153, 176, 196 pattern 173 accommodation 20, 88, 180, 198, 200, 221, 246 actualization 56, 57, 239, 243 adaptation 236 additive 175, 177, 194, 200 particles under stress 173 superlative constructions 179 use 176 additivity 197 adjectival inXection 203, 213, 218, 232 adjectival modiWcation 78 adjective 20, 68, 82, 203 adjective-noun modiWcation 79 adult grammars 41 adverbs 234 adverbial 163 modiWer 162 use of lauter 214–15 adversative 7 agrammatism 248 agreement 208 algebra 13 aller faire future 120 alternative propositions 154, 158, 161, 166, 175, 188, 189, 192, 194, 228 alternatives 151, 156, 162, 166, 174, 180, 185, 186, 193–4, 228–9, 232 alternatives, salient 152, 157, 163, 186 analytic interpretation 50 anaphors 108, 109 ‘Anger is hot’ 45 argument 4, 70 argument structure 6, 132
aspect 66, 73 n., 92, 107–8, 111, 114, 118 atomic concept 237 attribute 226 auxiliary 1–2, 5, 23, 24, 27, 31, 55–6, 77, 98, 111, 117, 119 n., 124 auxiliary ‘have’ 1 pragmatic overload 247 be going to 98, 99, 100, 101–2, 119, 121, 127 bead 39, 46 believe 78 Bestellung 33 bleaching 17, 23, 30–3, 196–7, 247, 249 blending 45, 78, 82 bloß 6–7, 46 bondedness 48 bridging 51–3, 245 categorization 62 centrality eVects 174, 176, 196 cline 24, 26, 56 closed class item 48 cognition 13 cognitive abilities 243 cognitive universals 91 collocation 213 combination of verb and object NP 76 combinatorial power 82 combining semantic representation 117 communication 38, 61, 62, 88 communicative intention 42, 53 communicative situations 9, 43 comparative constructions 133 comparatives 134 composition 66, 120–1, 127, 235 compositionality 41, 57, 78 computation of meaning 77
282
Index
concept 62, 188, 248–9 conceptual 237, 248 conceptual domains 45 conceptualization 159 conceptual limits 188 conditional 123–4, 127, 133, 134, 146, 148, 165 conWdent speaker 3, 9, 13 connotations 213–14 conservativity 209–10, 233, 242 constant term 250, 251, 252 content words 16, 34, 248 context 56–7, 93, 133, 137, 139, 146–7, 148–9, 150, 153, 177 of change 14, 19, 23 downward-entailing 148–50, 156, 157–8, 162 of origin 94 context-dependent 206, 238, 244 contextual restriction 223 contiguity 45 contingency 57 contingent facts 84 conventionalization 10, 40, 41, 43, 50, 54, 233 conventions of use 172 converb construction 98 conversational maxims 89 conveyed information 83 cookbooks 218 core-periphery 174, 182, 187, 196 structure 179–80, 198, 200, 244, 246 corpora 52 corpus 177, 199–200 database 145 research 92, 93, 96, 98 count noun 215–17, 219 counterfactuals 64 counterfactual worlds 64 creative use of language 199, 201 decay 133 decomposition 119
default inferences 59, 87 default logic 86 defeasible laws 86 deWnite description 191 n. degree adjectives 79–80 deictic noun phrase 226 denotation 74 determiner 20, 68, 73–5, 77, 132, 164, 202, 204, 207, 242 dialectal variants 132 discourse 56, 67–8, 107, 112–13 markers 5, 6, 7, 23, 27, 43, 46–50 particle 6, 7, 48 referents 108, 109 representation theory 107–8 semantics 68 discrete 55, 56, 220, 225, 233, 236, 239, 241, 243 (language) change 56, 243 objects 220, 225, 233 stages 55 steps 55, 56, 236, 239, 241 distribution of semantic labour 193 domain widening 150 double-Wh-question 230 downward monotonicity 164 drama 100, 126 Early Modern High German 201, 211, 242 embedded sentence 78 emphasis 145, 151, 157, 167 emphatic 151, 155, 156 assertion 161 focus 154–5, 158, 162, 189, 190, 193, 198, 201 negation 128–30, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 150, 155, 163, 165, 167, 169, 240 entailment 88 entourage 174, 180, 187, 190–2, 194, 198 epistemic background 53, 160 event 63, 81, 84, 110, 113, 116 event argument 84, 109 as discourse referent 109
Index event time 106, 111, 114, 241 existential closure 222–3 existential quantiWcation 227 expressive 5, 42 needs 42–3 expressiveness 54 expressivity 43 extension 60–5 fading 30, 31, 33 Faß 33 fast 39, 46 focus 68, 151, 153, 170, 184, 227–8, 232, 241 alternatives 154, 164–5, 169 constructions 189 particle 6, 7, 19, 48, 151, 154, 164 n., 171–3, 175, 182, 184, 189, 191–2, 196, 200–1, 204 projection 180, 198 semantic value 152–3 semantics 151, 184 formulae 251 formulaic expression 213 function 65, 71, 187–8, 189, 200, 251 characteristic 65 function term 250, 251 function word 235, 248–9 functional application 70–1 functional approaches 29 functional words 34 functor 4, 32, 67 futurate reading 93 futurate sense 100, 127 futurate uses 97, 99 future 5, 6, 11, 12, 23–4, 27, 32, 49, 73 n., 80–1, 91, 92–6, 98, 102–4, 111, 114, 120, 123–5, 126–7, 218, 241, 244 immediate 102 imminent 94, 96, 98 future tense 5, 11 in if-then clauses 123 semantics of 125 futurity 241
283
gehen 95, 103–5, 126 gehen und P tun 104 gehen zu tun 105 generalization 3, 31–3 generalized invited inferences 9, 40, 103, 106, 125, 238, 244 generalized quantiWer 209, 225, 232 generative lexicon 243 generic sentence 225 generic statement 226–7, 231 going to 11, 19, 87, 96, 100, 237, 241, 243–4 futurate use of 101, 126 grammaticalization of 125 in the movement sense 93 participial construction of 99 reanalysis of 126 going to future 18, 35, 52, 54, 63, 91–2, 96–7, 115, 118 early examples of 94 as a loan construction 95 origin of 97 goutte 128, 129, 131–2 gradual: change 176 meaning change 237 meaning shift 238 process 55, 129 grammatical categories 16, 24, 56 grammaticality judgements 14 grammaticalization 5–7, 22–9, 49, 50, 55, 106, 128, 140, 247, 249 as an epiphenomenon 33 Grimmelshausen 178, 179, 181, 182, 260 Gryphius, Andreas 181 haben 31 hat contour 189–90, 193 n. 12, 198 have þ participle 2, 6, 32 heben 31 historical pragmatics 23, 46, 91, 238 holistic conception of language 28
284
Index
holistic conception of language 28 interpretation 50–1 homonyms 243 hypothetico-deductive reasoning 41 idealized conceptual models 43 identity function 185, 197, 200 imminence 92, 97, 101, 103, 120–2, 124, 125, 127, 241, 244, 248 n. of an action 92, 102 implications 55, 59 implicature 8, 10, 17, 89–90, 239 conventional 10, 119, 224 conversational 10, 59 pragmatic 10, 40, 237, 238 scalar 158 indeed 46 individual terms 250 in fact 46 inference 8, 13, 20, 40, 86–7, 89, 105, 118–19, 125–6, 125–6, 127: see also default infereneces; generalized invited inferences; Invited Inferencing; pragmatic inference; scalar inferences information 83, 117 information structure 234 innovation 16, 201 intensiWer 19, 171, 174, 175, 199 intension 65, 104 intensional adjectives 79, 80 intensionality 82 intensional verbs 67 intentional use of metaphor 35 interpretation: exhaustive 221–2, 231, 233 existential 221–2, 231, 233 intersubjectiWcation 49 inter-subjective relations 43 introspective judgement 188 Invited Inferencing 40, 55, 106
Jespersen cline 128–9, 133, 134, 139, 140, 145–7, 165–8, 170, 237 Kleid 33 lambda: abstraction 67, 69, 76, 252, 254 conversion 70–1 term 70, 74, 115, 254 language: acquisition 29, 41, 248 change 150, 202 contact 95–6 decay 143 as social objects 61 stages 29 variation 146 Latin 1, 5, 9, 23, 37, 73, 117, 130, 178, 212 lauter 20 attributive lauter 231 layering 24 lexical content 68, 127, 155, 215 lexical decomposition 237 lexical entry 12–4 lexical knowledge 85 licensing contexts 169 light verbs 38 linguistic division of labour 58 literal content 55 literary register 140 literal meaning 42, 59 local antecedent 193 locative 97 logical entailment 83–4, 86 logical necessity 176 logical semantics 78 logical type 236 loss: of centrality eVects 197 of emphasis 166 -and-gain 236 of ne 133 of presupposition 196
Index Luther, Martin 212–13, 217 Luxembourg 96
285
complex negation 129–30, 146, 169 in Old French 159 particle 19, 58, 129–30, 133, 135–40, 145, 161, 164–7, 237, 240 particles in a positive sense 137–8, 145, 159, 169 negative polarity 149 n., 169 uses 238 negative polarity item 19, 130, 133, 139, 147–8, 150–1, 155, 157, 162, 165, 240 strong 158 negative quantiWers 170 neˆoman 170 ne pas negation 37 noun 152 NP in object position 75 NP meaning 76 NPI 128, 142, 156 licensing in questions 160 in questions 159 strong 159 nuclear scope 205
markedness 56, 243 mass noun 216 meaning composition 13, 66, 72, 78; see also composition, semantic composition meaning postulates 85 meaning, truth conditional 57, 186, 241 meˆme 171 mental lexicon 242 mereological 231 mereology 219 metaphor 3–4, 17, 23, 33, 34–9, 45, 91, 93, 95 creative 36 emerging 36 subconscious 38 metonymy 3–4, 17, 23, 38, 43–5, 236, 238 Middle French 132, 139, 145, 166 mie 128, 129, 131 minimal entities 142, 150 minimal pairs 199 modal base 81 modal expressions 8 modal particle 49 modals in English 43 modal verbs 81 model 66, 67, 253 models for language L 251 models for a language of type logic 253 modular conception of language 28 motivated change 34, 37–8 movement 97, 100, 104–5, 115, 121, 122–3, 125, 126, 241 interpretation 102 sense 101 uses 99
obwohl 46–8 Old French 132–3, 139, 145, 161, 164, 166, 170 one-place property 76 onset context 42, 43, 44, 53, 179, 199, 217, 241 n. of change 10, 50 ontology 35, 39, 44, 63, 67, 84, 113 n., 162 operators 6 Opitz, Martin 177, 181, 212 order of arguments 72 order of events 110, 114 ostensive 248
negation 128, 130–2, 134, 136, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146, 148, 158, 161, 166, 168–9, 210
paradigmaticity 25, 48 paradigmatic variability 26, 48 paradigmatic weight 25
286
Index
parameters of grammaticalization 24, 25, 47 particle 77, 136, 142, 164, 166–7, 168–70, 173, 189, 198, 200, 203, 235; see also discourse particle; focus particle; modal particle; negation particle part-whole structures 220 pas 58, 128, 129, 131, 132 in a positive sense 142, 149 in questions in a positive sense 144 in rhetorical yes/no-questions 143 past, immediate 115 past perfect 110, 111, 113, 118 n. past progressive 111 pathways of change 48 pejorative 215–17, 219 perfect 2, 6, 107 periphrastic perfect 1 ‘permutation’ 39, 46 persistence of meaning 123 personne 128, 131 pidgin 248, 249 pluralic entity 227 plurality 220, 224, 226 poetry 199 point 128, 129, 131 polarity item: strong 164 weak 159 polysemy 12, 24 possible situation 72 possible worlds 63, 67 possible worlds semantics 62 post-stage of change 184 pragmatic 56, 83, 87, 99, 126, 130 function 231 implicatures 237 inference 8, 11, 42, 51, 53, 125, 127, 194, 197, 245 inferencing 4, 7, 10, 43–4, 50, 54, 90, 238, 246, 247 overload 19–20, 244–6 restrictions 232
speciWcation 233 strengthening 32, 36–7, 38, 196–7, 223 support 179, 200, 217 theory of negative polarity items 147 theory of negative polarity sensitivity 169 theory of polarity sensitivity 150, 157, 182 pragmatics 60, 67–8, 88 preconditions for reanalysis 177 predicate logic 67, 77, 250, 252 predication 231 predicational construction 225 preposition 6, 7, 115 present orientation 125 pre-stage 184 presupposition 87–8, 157, 170, 185, 191, 195, 229, 236 principles and parameters theory of language acquisition 247 progressive 106, 112, 116, 121, 127 proper name 63, 68–9 proposition 7, 13, 16, 17, 40, 45, 69, 73, 77–8, 81, 83, 86, 111 n., 119–20, 127, 141, 151, 153–6, 158, 161–3, 166, 181, 189–90, 193–5, 223, 245, 248, 249; see also alternative propositions propositional attitudes 67, 78, 81 prosodic pattern 153 prosody 175, 196–9 prototype shifts 4 quantiWcation 73, 228 quantiWer 75, 152, 226, 234 scope 73 question 134, 136 reanalysis 2, 4, 10, 13, 22, 27, 42, 54, 83, 101, 106, 118, 121, 122, 127, 179, 195, 233 redistribution of semantic labour 197, 236
Index reference time 106, 108, 111–112, 114, 116, 119, 124, 241 referential theory of names 63 reXexives 172, 192 relation 60, 251 relation term 250, 251 restrictor 205, 234 Reuter 181 rhetorical: Wgure 245 question 144–5, 160 structure 198 rien 128, 131 rise-fall pattern, see hat contour ritualization 50 safe 82 ‘say’ future 11, 12, 31, 37 scalar 150, 158, 162, 174, 180–1, 197, 214, 216 n. implication 178 inferences 161, 163 scale 7, 20, 79–80, 155, 172, 176, 219, 246 scope 234 selber 182 n. selbst: adnominal 13, 175, 176, 186, 189, 192 adnominal intensifying selbst 186 adnominal use of selbst 173, 175, 176, 186, 189, 192 adverbial selbst 175, 186, 192 exclusive 175–6 intensifying 191 non-additive intensifying 179 in superlative constructions 181 stressed 173 self, formulaic use of 193 semantic analysis 14, 17, 18, 19, 55, 57, 91, 125, 185, 205, 210, 223, 240, 242, 246 semantic combination 63, 184 semantic composition 15, 16, 41, 58, 59, 73, 82, 89, 249
287
semantic contribution 49 semantic equation 13, 119, 195, 197, 240 n. semantic integrity 48 semanticization 4 semantic properties 164 semantic reanalysis 21, 39, 45, 102, 115, 120, 247 semantic reorganization 49 semantic representation 16, 19, 41, 57, 66, 83–4, 106, 116–17, 119, 120, 202, 205, 209, 211, 222, 231, 242, 244 semantic representation for Modern German lauter 222 semantics 60 cognitive 15, 28, 59, 86 compositional 170, 248 conceptual 62, 82 formal 18, 41, 106, 126 semantics-pragmatics interface 238 semantic theory 82 semantic universal 20, 209, 242 semantic weakening 146 sentence connectives 6 sentence meaning 40, 57–8, 60, 66, 68 simple past 111 simple tense 112 since 7–9 siððan 9 situation 69, 71 counterfactual 66 small quantities 130 sociolinguistic imitation 240 sociolinguistics 50, 54, 85, 242, 245 sortal restriction 122 source domain 36, 37, 39 source meaning 44 speaker community 249 speciWcation 3 speciWc indeWnite 81 speciWc object 225 speech act 89, 148 speech time 106, 111, 114, 116, 119, 241 starve 33
288
Index
stereotypes 86 Stern, Gustaf 3, 39–40, 46 stranding 20, 207–8, 227, 231, 232 prohibition 207–9, 225, 229, 242 structural scope 26, 47 Stu¨cke der Englischen Komo¨dianten 104 stylistic emphasis 166, 169 stylistic requirement 167 subjectiWcation 43, 49, 239 subminimal subevents 163 superlative 135, 183, 193 constructions 182 switch context 51–2 syntactic variability 48 syntagmatic: bondedness 2 criteria 47 variability 26 syntax-semantics interface 4, 10, 15, 17, 57 target domain 39 temporal: connective 8 interpretation 114 modiWer 79 relation 111, 114 structure 113 tense 66, 73 n., 77, 92, 107–8, 111, 114, 118 as a deitic category 106 interpretation of 111 thematic roles 73 theological contexts 218 theory of meaning 61 thing 33 time of speech 107, 124 topic: contrastive 208, 225 discourse 189 transitive verb 72, 76, 152 transparency principle 247
truth conditional semantics 15, 54, 64, 79, 82, 115, 235 truth value 28, 60, 65 truth value based, see truth condition truth value based semantics 57, 59 truth value judgment 61, 62 two-level semantics 121 type 252 type logic 74, 252, 253 underspeciWcation 121 undirectionality 26, 27, 235 n. uniformitarian principle 245 uninXected determiner 208 universal 232, 233 Universal Grammar 234 universality hypothesis 36, 50 universal quantiWcation 146, 148, 205–6 universal statement 178 Urdu 38 utterance: contexts 39 situation 40, 92, 100, 236 variable assignment 251, 253 variability 26 venire de faire 35–7, 44, 53 weil 46–8 Weise, Christian 181 wendan 102 went 102 went to do 122 wiht 170 will future 23, 124 word meaning 57–8, 85 word order: 26, 170, 234 Wxed 73 free 73 world knowledge 85, 86, 109, 118
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