Critical review

Uppsala university Ht-15

Julia Rutberg, Nehir Aygül, Xioqun Sun

Critical review 2 Introduction This critical review focuses on a significant feature of the grammaticalisation process, namely that of meaning. During the second class we discussed the motivations of change, which are language acquisition, contact between communities and negotiation of meaning in speech. Though, some view the concepts of metaphor and metonymy as the main reasons for change. They suggest that “be going to” as a future marker and locative expressions conveyed by using body terms are examples of metaphor in grammaticalization. According to Hopper and Traugott meaning is central in grammaticalization, because a change in what a linguistic item denotes could be viewed as one of the definitions of grammaticalization. Another reason for semantic change is pragmatic inference which means that the meaning of a linguistic item is being interpreted differently. This text also focuses on the process of degrammaticalization and the unidirectionality hypothesis (UD). UD proposes that grammaticalization is a oneway street and claims that it would be impossible for a grammatical item to develop in the opposite direction of the grammaticalization cline. However, the opinions on this are divided and some researchers claim that degrammaticalization is rare but actually occurs; others mean that movement in the opposite direction on the cline is not necessarily examples of degrammaticalization but instead another process called lexicalization. Lehmann proposed six parameters which are useful in determining which of two items is more grammatical. The parameters are made up of three aspects (weight, cohesion and variability) analysed from two perspectives (paradigmatic and syntagmatic). A critical summary of the issues dealt with during the second and third meeting. 1. An example of a change where there has been loss of meaning. In historical linguistics, the loss or reduction of meaning in a word results of semantic change. Generally, lexical words have more semantic features-are more specific –than grammatical words. ‘Thing’ used to refer to an assembly or council, but in time came to refer to anything. In modern English slang, the same development has been affecting the word ‘shit’, whose basic meaning 'feces' has broadened to become synonymous with 'thing' or 'stuff' in some contexts (Don't touch my shit; I've got a lot of shit to take care of this weekend). We can see from these examples that the meaning of words becomes vague. When a verb becomes a future marker, it loses the feature volition, but keeps the feature future, which is present already in the meaning of ‘want’. Also when a grammatical item becomes more grammatical, semantic bleaching also takes place.(Historical Linguistics 2005 pp:26 Grammaticalization as reduction) (Benjamin W. Forston IV, "An Approach to Semantic Change." The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, ed. by Brian D. Joseph and Richard D. Janda. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003) 2. Can there be new meanings appearing through grammaticalisation? If so, what kind of meanings?

Uppsala university Ht-15

Julia Rutberg, Nehir Aygül, Xioqun Sun

A lexical word can acquire more grammatical abstract meanings through mechanisms of grammaticalization such as desemanticization. For example, the verb of motion go to gave rise to a future tense marker Heine pg. 591 3. Try to think of examples which go in the opposite direction on the cline of grammaticality.  “It has been observed that a case inflection, such as a genitive case suffix, may assume clitic status” (Heine p. 582). It could be claimed that this is what has happened to the Old Swedish s-genitive suffix. For example, phrases like “pojken som var litens […]” (the boy who was little’s […]” are observed, where the s-genitive is used as a clitic. (Narrog & Heine, 2011, p. 477).  Euphemism is often a reason for language change. In many languages it has been observed how prepositional phrases is used to refer to specific, often sexually denoted, body parts (“(the thing) in front of”, “(the one) below” Heine p. 582). This is often seen as a reversal of grammaticalisation since a grammatical phrase (PP) has been degrammaticalized to noun. 4. What would it mean for grammaticalisation & historical linguistics if we were to see certain intonation changes, umlaut changes, ablaut changes and word order changes as grammaticalisation? If we were to see intonation changes etc. as grammaticalization we would get a better understanding of how grammatical relations can be expressed. We would also be able to see how the means of expressing the grammatical relations are created and compare them to see what they have in common and how they differ from what is generally meant by grammaticalization. Furthermore, it would help us to determine why unidirectional grammaticalization should to be more frequently occurring (Grammaticalization – Past and Present).

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Heine, Bernd. Grammaticalization. From: Joseph, B. D., & Janda, R. D. (2003). The handbook of historical linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Narrog, H., & Heine, B., 1939. (2011). The oxford handbook of grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lindström, Tiedemann, T. Grammaticalization – Past and Present