![Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics
Edited by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
1
CURRENT TRENDS IN DIACHRONIC SEMANTICS
AND PRAGMATICS
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
1. THE ROLE OF PRAGMATIC INFERENCING IN MEANING CHANGE
Research on semantic change has gained considerable momentum from the idea that pragmatic
factors are a driving force in the process. The idea, first suggested by Grice (1989 [1975]: 39), that
‘‘it may not be impossible for what starts life, so to speak, as a conversational implicature to
become conventionalized’’, was systematized in Traugott’s Invited Inferencing Theory of
Semantic Change (IITSC) (Traugott, 1999; Traugott and Dasher, 2002). More precisely, semantic
change is seen as ‘‘arising out of the pragmatic uses to which speakers or writers and addressees or
readers put language, and most especially out of the preferred strategies that speakers/writers use
in communicating with addressees’’ (Traugott and Dasher, 2002: xi). The model, which is based
on Levinson’s theory of generalized conversational implicature (GCIs) (Levinson, 2000), in
particular on the distinction between ‘‘coded’’, ‘‘utterance-type’’ and ‘‘utterance-token’’ levels of
meaning (Levinson, 1995), is represented in Figure 1.1 (from Traugott and Dasher, 2002: 38).
In this model, assuming that the meaning M1 of a lexeme L is linked to the conceptual structure
Ca at stage I, innovation may be produced by speakers/writers employing L in a particular,
‘‘utterance-token’’, use. Should such a use spread to more contexts and become salient in the
community, it acquires the status of a ‘‘generalized invited inference’’ and may eventually become
semanticized as a new coded meaning M2 for L at stage II.
The IITSC arose in the context of reflection on replicated cross-linguistic regularities in
semantic change, which the theory explained by assuming that they are the outcome of similar
cognitive and communicative processes across languages. This has a number of consequences,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/17352-250509101500-9b58afa8/85/Current-Trends-in-Diachronic-Semantics-and-Pragmatics-Maj-15-320.jpg)
![bringing about the change in the past.2
As soon as reconstruction is involved to a more significant
extent, we are on shakier ground, however.
For this reason, as current theorizing about diachronic semantics and pragmatics, as
exemplified by the contributions to this volume, develops and is refined, there can be little doubt
that the field would benefit from being informed to a greater extent by insights from
‘‘pragmaphilology’’ (Jacobs and Jucker, 1995) or ‘‘historical discourse analysis proper’’ (Brinton,
2001), that is, the synchronic study of discourse–pragmatic structures and functions and their
corresponding means of expression in older texts. At present, however, there appears to be
relatively little overlap among practitioners of the two disciplines.
1.2. What are the respective roles of the speaker and the hearer?
A second major issue in diachronic semantics and pragmatics concerns the redefinition of the
respective roles of speakers/writers and addressees/readers in the process of innovation. In
particular, a set of proposals criticizes the speaker-based nature of the IITSC approach. As noted
by Traugott (1999: 95):
Although it recognizes the importance of guiding addresses to an interpretation [ . . . ] nevertheless
the assumption of IITSC is that the speaker/writer does most of the work of innovation, not the
hearer/reader. The idea is that the speaker/writer tries out a new use exploiting available
implicatures. If the innovative use succeeds, the hearer/reader will interpret the intention
correctly, and possibly experiment in similar ways in producing speech/writing. But rarely does
the act of interpretation itself lead directly to innovation.
Although this is to some extent a classic chicken-and-egg problem, Traugott’s assumption has
been challenged by several scholars, among whom the authors of the two parallel studies already
mentioned above, both proposing a model of semantic change based on the diachronically less
used notion of presupposition.
In the view of both Schwenter and Waltereit (forthcoming) and Eckardt (this volume), hearers
who are unable or unwilling to accommodate presuppositions assume a novel interpretation of a
former presupposition trigger and eventually pass this new interpretation on to other people,
thereby changing the language. According to Schwenter and Waltereit, a hearer who is confronted
with an utterance and assigns an interpretation to it that deviates from that utterance’s literal
meaning has, in principle, two options: (i) assume that regular pragmatic operations, such as
2
Even this cannot be taken for granted, however: when scholars rely on their semantic–pragmatic
intuitions, competing mechanisms may sometimes be invoked with equal probability to account for one
and the same instance of change.
Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 5](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/17352-250509101500-9b58afa8/85/Current-Trends-in-Diachronic-Semantics-and-Pragmatics-Maj-19-320.jpg)
![conversational inference and the accommodation of presuppositions, mediate between the literal
meaning and the chosen nonliteral interpretation; (ii) assume a novel conventional meaning for
some element of that utterance. In that case, fewer pragmatic computations, and/or less costly
ones, may be required, since there is no need anymore for them to mediate between the
chosen interpretation and the traditional (previous) conventional meaning. If a hearer chooses
(ii) and uses the novel form-meaning pairing in his/her own discourse, the language will have
changed.
Assuming that interpretive efforts by the listener are at the heart of ‘‘Avoid-Pragmatic-
Overload’’-induced changes, Eckardt (this volume) moreover suggests a hearer-driven conception
of the trend toward subjectification. Earlier approaches, she argues, leave open the question
whether the subjective element is pressed into an utterance as a kind of Sprachnot phenomenon by
the speaker or enters the meaning of words by an interpretive effort of the listener. Eckardt
suggests that, in at least some cases, the subjective element enters the language via the interpretive
efforts of the listener, not because
listeners are constantly searching to see the speaker’s soul through his utterances, but because in
the case of a truly senseless utterance the charitable listener will try to make at least some sense of
that utterance. It is much more implausible to perceive subjectification as a speaker-driven
process. Uttering incoherent sentences and hoping that the listener will grab your message does
not seem a rational communicative strategy (Eckardt, this volume).
Hansen (2008: 76) likewise argues that the reanalyses performed by hearers may be unintended
by speakers, and that they may even, on some occasions, result from clear misunderstandings on
the hearer’s part. In particular, theories that attribute a central role to the metonymical processes
cannot afford to ignore this possibility, in so far as literal and metonymical meanings will often be
mutually compatible. To take a simple example, if the change from Latin TESTIMONIUM (testimony)
W French témoin (witness) came about as suggested by Koch (2004: 16f ), namely via the
(necessary) metonymical link between the existence of testimony and that of a witness, in contexts
where utterances such as (1) would be produced, then it is unlikely that it would have been
speaker driven:
(1) [Judge:] Audiamus testimonium proximum!
‘Let’s hear the next piece of testimony!’
Even more obviously, while the change responsible for the two currently competing meanings
of the Danish noun bjørnetjeneste (literally ‘bear favor’), ‘a favor that has unintended negative
results’ W ‘a really big favor’, can be attributed to the non-transparency of that noun, and hence
its potential ambiguity in contexts such as (2), it is highly implausible that speakers familiar with
the original, negatively loaded, meaning could be held responsible for the rise of the innovative,
positively loaded, interpretation. In this case, there can be little doubt that the process must have
6 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/17352-250509101500-9b58afa8/85/Current-Trends-in-Diachronic-Semantics-and-Pragmatics-Maj-20-320.jpg)
![polysemies, and the position in the clause of these various adverbs differ, the fundamental
cognitive reflex depending on the Cardinal Concessive, which is part of our everyday
conceptualization of events, is very similar in all of them. This suggests that the underlying
motivation for the recruitment of such usages is universal, arising from social interactional
exigencies related to questions of face.
The study by Carla Bazzanella and Johanna Miecznikowski, ‘‘Central/Peripheral Functions of
‘allora’ and ‘Overall Pragmatic Configuration,’’’ suggests that Italian allora (‘so’, ‘then’) has
considerably expanded its functional spectrum from the 13th century up to the present day.
Starting out from temporal functions (simultaneity and consecution), the following functions have
been added (in order of diachronic appearance): (i) functions in the domain of causality,
(ii) inferential-evidential functions, and (iii) text and interaction structuring functions. Functional
expansion has been accompanied by semantic shifts, among others a deictic shift (distal W
proximal), as well as by syntactic shifts (in particular, ana-/cataphorical adverb W connective at
utterance margins W iconic segment-initial connective). In this development, the use of allora in
hypothetical constructions – which in themselves are polyfunctional and often potentially
ambiguous – seems to have played an important role. To explain allora’s semantic-functional
expansion, it is useful to posit (a) a basic relational semantics of the lexeme, which is quite stable
over time and (b) general semantic/cognitive principles that account for the relative proximity of
certain semantic domains, and therefore the probability of a (metaphorical) shift from one domain
of meaning to the other. However, (a) and (b) merely delineate potential paths of development; in
the explanation of change, they have to be integrated with specific hypotheses about the driving
forces of change. Bazzanella and Miecznikowski strongly emphasize the importance of pragmatic
factors as driving forces, that is, functional pressures arising in recurrent situations of use. In the
case of allora, strongly argumentational dialogue types seem to have played a key role. In the
analysis offered, the shifts mentioned above are related to both general properties of spoken
language in interaction and more specific properties of co-construed argumentational discourse.
The action of these factors as driving forces can be accounted for if one assumes that the semantic
and functional potential of a linguistic item corresponds to a prototypically organized set of
features which, in language use, is actualized as an ‘overall pragmatic configuration’, in which
some potential features become more relevant than others, in congruence with contextual
parameters, and are thus strengthened by recurrent use in certain constructions and situation types.
Unlike routinization (Hopper, 1987) and context (Hopper and Traugott, 1993 [2003]), both
traditionally regarded as triggers of grammaticalization, a factor such as paradigmatic relations has
mainly been seen as responsible for the spread of change, not as the locus where changes take
place. Against this background, Maria Estelles’ article on ‘‘The Importance of Paradigms in
Grammaticalization: Spanish Digressive Markers ‘por cierto’ and ‘a propósito’’’ highlights their
role as a possible cause of grammaticalization processes. The importance of paradigms is
illustrated by tracing back the history of the two most frequent markers of digression in Spanish,
Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 13](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/17352-250509101500-9b58afa8/85/Current-Trends-in-Diachronic-Semantics-and-Pragmatics-Maj-27-320.jpg)
![Diewald, G. (2002). ‘‘A model for relevant types of contexts in grammaticalization’’, in I. Wischer and
G. Diewald (eds.), New reflections on grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 103–120.
Diewald, G. (2006). ‘‘Context types in grammaticalization as constructions’’, Constructions, SV1-9. http://
www.constructions-online.de/
Dostie, G. (2004). Pragmaticalisation et marqueurs discursifs. Analyse sémantique et traitement
lexicologique. Brussels: De Boeck/Duculot.
Eckardt, R. (2003). The structure of change. Meaning change under reanalysis. Habilitation thesis, Berlin:
Humboldt Universität (Revised version published in 2006 by Oxford University Press).
Enfield, N. J. (2005). ‘‘Micro- and macro-dimensions in linguistic systems’’, in S. Marmaridou, K. Nikiforidou
and E. Antonopoulou (eds.), Reviewing linguistic thought: Converging trends for the 21st century (Trends
in linguistics. Studies and monographs, Vol. 161). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 313–325.
Erman, B. and U.-B. Kotsinas (1993). ‘‘Pragmaticalization: The case of ba’ and you know’’. Studier i modern
språkvetenskap 10: 76–93.
Evans, N. and D. Wilkins (2000). ‘‘In the mind’s ear: The semantic extensions of perception verbs in
Australian languages’’. Language 76: 546–592.
Grice, H. P. (1989[1975]). ‘‘Logic and conversation’’, in his studies in the way of words. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 22–40.
Hansen, M.-B. M. (2008), Particles at the semantics/pragmatics interface: Synchronic and diachronic issues.
A study with special reference to the French phasal adverbs, (Current research in the semantics–
pragmatics interface, Vol. 19). Oxford/Bingley: Elsevier/Emerald.
Hansen, M.-B. M. and R. Waltereit (2006). ‘‘GCI theory and language change’’, in M.-B. M. Hansen and
K. Turner (eds.), Explorations in the semantics/pragmatics interface. Special issue of Acta Lingvistica
Hafniensia, 38: 235–268.
Heine, B. (2002). ‘‘On the role of context in grammaticalization’’, in I. Wischer and G. Diewald (eds.), New
reflections on grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 103–120.
Hopper, P. J. (1987). ‘‘Emergent grammar’’. Berkeley Linguistics Society 13: 139–157.
Hopper, P. J. and E. C. Traugott (2003). Grammaticalization. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jacobs, A. and A. H. Jucker (1995). ‘‘The historical perspective in pragmatics’’, in A. H. Jucker (ed.),
Historical pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 3–33.
Koch, P. (2004). ‘‘Metonymy between pragmatics, reference, and diachrony’’. Metaphorik.de 7: 6–54.
www.metaphorik.de
Labov, W. (1994). Principles of linguistic change, internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lehmann, C. (1985). ‘‘Grammaticalization: Synchronic variation and diachronic change’’. Lingua e stile XX
(3): 303–318.
Levinson, S. C. (1995). ‘‘Three levels of meaning’’, in F. R. Palmer (ed.), Grammar and meaning. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 90–115.
Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings. The theory of generalized conversational implicature.
Harvard, MA: MIT Press.
Pons Borderı́a, S. (2006). ‘‘From pragmatics to semantics: esto es in formulaic expressions’’, in M.-B. M.
Hansen and K. Turner (eds.), Explorations in the semantics/pragmatics interface. Special issue of Acta
Lingvistica Hafniensia, 38: 180–206.
Schwenter, S. A. and Waltereit, R. (forthcoming). ‘‘Presupposition accommodation and language change’’, in
H. Cuyckens, K. Davidse and L. Vandelanotte (eds.), Subjectification, intersubjectification and
grammaticalization, (Topics in English linguistics). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2001). Intercultural communication. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
18 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/17352-250509101500-9b58afa8/85/Current-Trends-in-Diachronic-Semantics-and-Pragmatics-Maj-32-320.jpg)
![It is virtually impossible to conceive of any context/content of utterance where the
(a) utterances would give rise to implicatures like those in (b). This is particularly clear for the
case of fastGerman. It has been argued that almost S entails not S (Sadock, 1981) while very S
certainly does entail S. The relevant entailments are summarized in (4).
(4) Tom is very drunk-Tom is drunk.
Tom is almost drunk-Tom is not drunk.
If (2.b) were an implicature of (2.a), we’d face a case of an utterance with a logically
contradicting implicature. This only happens when a speaker flouts the maxim of quality and
makes an ironic statement. It would be possible, of course, to use very/fastGerman in an ironic
statement. Yet, then we’d normally understand that ‘‘very much P’’, ironically, conveys that ‘‘not
P at all’’. For the other three instances of change, it is likewise hard to tell a story how
implicatures should give rise to the newer sense.
Yet, speculations are of limited value and instead of debating the possibility or impossibility of
certain types of implicatures, we should take a look at usages of the items in question that have
been found indicative for imminent or ongoing change by earlier authors. Traugott (2001, 2006)
offers a detailed discussion of data in the phase of emergence of even in the scalar sense. Among
other examples, she offers (5) as an interesting quote around the turning point from ‘exactly’ to
scalar particle.
(5) when I remembre your ffavour and your sadde loffynge delynge to me wardes, ffor south
ye make me evene veray glade and joyus in my hart; [ . . . ]
‘when I remember your beauty and sober loving behaviour toward me, truly you make
me oevenW very glad and joyous in my heart . . . ’
(1476 Private Letters of John Shillingford, II, 7 after Traugott, 2001: 10)
We will certainly agree with Traugott’s diagnosis that (5) does not show a straightforward use
of even in the then predominant sense ‘exactly, just’. However, it is not a use of the type that one
would expect in the light of the GIIN theory either. Specifically, this is not a passage where the
speaker literally utters ‘‘you make me exactly happy’’ and thereby implicates ‘‘you make me very
happy’’. As the first proposition does not implicate the second even in particular, it can’t be a
generalized invited implicature, either. Pre-theoretically speaking, (5) simply looks like a mistaken
choice of words by the writer, a Thomas Betson to his cousin Katherine Ryche (Traugott, 2001:
10). Traugott glosses the use as ‘‘emphatic’’ which is a plausible prose characterization of the
passage, but not part of an analysis of the development in terms of GIINs.
Similar ‘‘mistaken’’ uses can be found for the other three items in (1) at the turn between older
and newly emerging additional sense. Given that they don’t seem to exemplify implicature, nor
irony, nor any other known rhetorical pattern, one might want to know what was going on there.
I will elaborate the hypothesis that such examples show instances of pragmatic overload and are
24 Regine Eckardt](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/17352-250509101500-9b58afa8/85/Current-Trends-in-Diachronic-Semantics-and-Pragmatics-Maj-38-320.jpg)
![4.2. even
In its earliest attested stage, once again shared by the German cognate eben, the word even
denoted ‘evenly, smoothly’ as a property of surfaces.
(20) Do past or cleye ther-upon al aboute as ytold bi-fore, caste Scalding hot honey euene
ther-upon
‘Put paste or mud thereon all around as said before cast scalding hot honey evenly
thereon’
(c. 1450 Horses, p. 113 [Helsinki], quote/translation after Traugott, 2006: 346)
This notion can also be applied in cases where two or more objects put together form an even
surface, and hence one fits the other evenly. From such uses, a somewhat later sense developed
that can be paraphrased in modern English by: ‘exactly, precisely; in (exactly) equal degree’. As to
be expected, the exact match can be one between two objects, or an object and a measure, as
illustrated in (21) (the passage describes the measures of Noah’s ark).
(21) The heght is euen thyrty Cubettys full strenght.
‘the height is exactly thirty cubits full strength’
(c. 1500 Towneley Plays, p. 21 [Helsinki], quote/translation after Traugott, 2006: 347)
The qualification that something was ‘‘exactly, just, precisely P’’ presupposes
a topology of approximating P-hood (canonically illustrated by numbers and scales like
‘roughly 20 years old’ – ‘exactly 20 years old’)
approximation from more than one direction
The topology need not rest on scientific scales or geometrical spaces; human concepts can rest
on more general topological spaces (e.g., Gärdenfors, 2000). The examples in (22) rest on a
topology of similarities between singing events, and report closer and loser similarities between
events where nightingales are singing and where humans are singing.
(22) She sang approximately like a nightingale
She sang exactly like a nightingale
The notion of ‘exactness’ is inapplicable
when a property P can not be approximated (#be roughly/exactly pregnant)
when a property P is inherently vague itself (# be roughly/exactly angry)
when a property P is the polar end of a scale
The last restriction may come somewhat surprisingly, but can easily be verified if we consider
infelicitous examples like those in (23). The infelicity arises for all adverbials that express
Avoid pragmatic overload 29](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/17352-250509101500-9b58afa8/85/Current-Trends-in-Diachronic-Semantics-and-Pragmatics-Maj-43-320.jpg)
![Let me finally point out, again, that neither (24) nor (25) support the assumption that even in
the scalar sense emerged by generalized implicatures (GIIN analysis). In neither (24) nor (25) is
even used in its literal old sense plus giving rise to an implicature that exactly P was most
surprisingly P. The word even is not used reasonably in its old sense at all, and hence can not give
rise to implicatures. The reader’s hermeneutic activity is initiated by the very observation that the
older use of even can not be the one at stake in either example.
4.3. perfino
In its modern sense, perfino translates to English even and can be used in sentences like the one
in (27).
(27) È venuto perfino Matteo
‘Even Matteo came’
(Visconti, 2005: 238)
In its traditional sense in Old Italian, perfino literally meant ‘through until, to the end’.
A typical example, offered in Visconti (2005), is shown in (28).
(28) b. Dentro in un bosco, che’è quivi vicino,/t’ imbosca es sta perfino al mattutino.
‘In a wood, which is near here, hide yourself in the wood and stay until morning’
(–1380 La Spagna after Visconti, 2005: 243)
A word that reports that P ‘‘holds through until the end’’ presupposes a topology, which defines
betweenness and the ancillary notion of an uninterrupted state between two points. The topology
can be one in space, but also one on more abstract domains.
The reached point can be neutral (like in (28)) but also conceptualized as a polar endpoint on a
scale.
(29) In ciò ancora che perseverò in croce perfino alla morte, ci dà ammaestramento di
perfetta obbedienza e pazienza, e di perseverare nella penitenza
‘In that too, that he endured the cross until death, he provides us with an example of
perfect obedience and patience.’
(1432 Cavalca, Esp. simbolo after Visconti, 2005: 243)
The following quote around the time of emergence of the scalar use ‘even’ is taken from
Visconti (2005). It fails to warrant the presuppositions of perfino in its older sense.
(30) [ . . . ] in acqua, in neve, in grandine o pruina: a tutto il ciel s’inclina, perfino a quel
che la natura sprezza’
‘Water, snow, hail or frost: To everything bends the sky, even to that which nature
despises’
(1389–1420 S. Serdini, Rime after Visconti, 2005: 244)
32 Regine Eckardt](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/17352-250509101500-9b58afa8/85/Current-Trends-in-Diachronic-Semantics-and-Pragmatics-Maj-46-320.jpg)
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- 6. STUDIES IN PRAGMATICS Series Editors: Bruce Fraser, Kerstin Fischer, Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen The Studies in Pragmatics series is dedicated to publishing innovative, authoritative monographs and edited collections from all micro-, macro-, and meta-pragmatic linguistic perspectives. Rooted in the interdisciplinary spirit of the Journal of Pragmatics, it welcomes not only book proposals from linguistics proper but also pragmatically oriented proposals from neighboring disciplines such as interactional sociology, language philosophy, communication science, social psychology, cognitive science, and information science. The goal of the series is to provide a widely read and respected international forum for high-quality theoretical, analytical, and applied pragmatic studies of all types. By publishing leading-edge work on natural language practice, it seeks to extend our growing knowledge of the forms, functions, and foundations of human interaction. Other titles in this series: FISCHER Approaches to Discourse Particles AIJMER & SIMON- VANDENBERGEN Pragmatic Markers in Contrast FETZER & FISCHER Lexical Markers of Common Grounds CAFFI Mitigation ROSSARI, RICCI & SPIRIDON Grammaticalization and Pragmatics: Facts, Approaches, Theoretical Issues FRASER & TURNER Language in Life, and a Life in Language: Jacob Mey – A Festschrift Proposals for the series are welcome. Please contact the Series Editor, Bruce Fraser: bfraser@bu.edu
- 7. CURRENT TRENDS IN DIACHRONIC SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS EDITED BY MAJ-BRITT MOSEGAARD HANSEN The University of Manchester, UK JACQUELINE VISCONTI University of Genova, Italy United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China
- 8. Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2009 Copyright r 2009 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact: booksandseries@emeraldinsight.com No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Editor or the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-84950-677-9 ISSN: 1750-368X (Series) Awarded in recognition of Emerald’s production department’s adherence to quality systems and processes when preparing scholarly journals for print
- 9. Studies in Pragmatics (SiP) Series Editors Bruce Fraser Boston University, USA Kerstin Fischer University of Southern Denmark Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen University of Manchester, UK Consulting Editor Jacob L. Mey University of Southern Denmark Editorial Board Diane Blakemore, University of Salford, UK Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Hebrew University, Israel Laurel Brinton, University of British Columbia, Canada Claudia Caffi, University of Genoa, Italy Alessandro Duranti, UCLA, USA Anita Fetzer, University of Lueneburg, Germany Marjorie Goodwin, UCLA, USA Hartmut Haberland, University of Roskilde, Denmark William F. Hanks, University of California, USA Sachiko Ide, Tokyo Women’s University, Japan Kasia Jaszczolt, University of Cambridge, UK Elizabeth Keating, University of Texas, USA Sotaro Kita, University of Bristol, UK Ron Kuzar, University of Haifa, Israel Lorenzo Mondada, University of Lyon 2, France Henning Nølke, University of Aarhus, Denmark Etsuko Oishi, Fuji Women’s University, Japan Srikant Sarangi, Cardiff University, UK Marina Sbisà, University of Trieste, Italy
- 11. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti APO: Avoid Pragmatic Overload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Regine Eckardt Diachronic Pathways and Pragmatic Strategies: Different Types of Pragmatic Particles from a Diachronic Point of View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Ulrich Detges and Richard Waltereit Context Sensitive Changes: The Development of the Affirmative Markers godt ‘good’ and vel ‘well’ in Danish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Eva Skafte Jensen Procatalepsis and the Etymology of Hedging and Boosting Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Kate Beeching Central/Peripheral Functions of allora and ‘Overall Pragmatic Configuration’: A Diachronic Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Carla Bazzanella and Johanna Miecznikowski The Importance of Paradigms in Grammaticalisation: Spanish Digressive Markers por cierto and a propósito . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Maria Estellés The Multiple Origin of es que in Modern Spanish: Diachronic Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Magdalena Romera From Aspect/Mood Marker to Discourse Particle: Reconstructing Syntactic and Semantic Change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Bethwyn Evans
- 12. The Grammaticalization Channels of Evidentials and Modal Particles in German: Integration in Textual Structures as a Common Feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Gabriele Diewald, Marijana Kresic and Elena Smirnova Evidentiality, Epistemicity, and their Diachronic Connections to Non-Factuality . . . . . . . . 211 Mario Squartini The Grammaticalization of Negative Reinforcers in Old and Middle French: A Discourse–Functional Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen A Roots Journey of a French Preposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Silvia Adler and Maria Asnes The Grammaticalization of Privative Adjectives: The Case of Mere. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Elke Gehweiler The Origin of Semantic Change in Discourse Tradition: A Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Katerina Stathi viii Table of Contents
- 13. LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Silvia Adler, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel Maria Asnes, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Carla Bazzanella, Università degli Studi, Turin, Italy Kate Beeching, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK Ulrich Detges, Institute for Romance Philology, University of Munich, Germany Gabriele Diewald, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany Regine Eckardt, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany Maria Estellés, Universidad de Valencia, Spain Bethwyn Evans, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Elke Gehweiler, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, The University of Manchester, UK Eva Skafte Jensen, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Marijana Kresic, University of Zadar, Croatia Johanna Miecznikowski, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland Magdalena Romera, Universidad de las Islas Baleares, Palma de Mallorca, Baleares, Spain Elena Smirnova, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany Mario Squartini, Università di Torino, Torino, Italy Katerina Stathi, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Jacqueline Visconti, University of Genova, Italy Richard Waltereit, Newcastle University, UK
- 15. Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics Edited by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved. 1 CURRENT TRENDS IN DIACHRONIC SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti 1. THE ROLE OF PRAGMATIC INFERENCING IN MEANING CHANGE Research on semantic change has gained considerable momentum from the idea that pragmatic factors are a driving force in the process. The idea, first suggested by Grice (1989 [1975]: 39), that ‘‘it may not be impossible for what starts life, so to speak, as a conversational implicature to become conventionalized’’, was systematized in Traugott’s Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC) (Traugott, 1999; Traugott and Dasher, 2002). More precisely, semantic change is seen as ‘‘arising out of the pragmatic uses to which speakers or writers and addressees or readers put language, and most especially out of the preferred strategies that speakers/writers use in communicating with addressees’’ (Traugott and Dasher, 2002: xi). The model, which is based on Levinson’s theory of generalized conversational implicature (GCIs) (Levinson, 2000), in particular on the distinction between ‘‘coded’’, ‘‘utterance-type’’ and ‘‘utterance-token’’ levels of meaning (Levinson, 1995), is represented in Figure 1.1 (from Traugott and Dasher, 2002: 38). In this model, assuming that the meaning M1 of a lexeme L is linked to the conceptual structure Ca at stage I, innovation may be produced by speakers/writers employing L in a particular, ‘‘utterance-token’’, use. Should such a use spread to more contexts and become salient in the community, it acquires the status of a ‘‘generalized invited inference’’ and may eventually become semanticized as a new coded meaning M2 for L at stage II. The IITSC arose in the context of reflection on replicated cross-linguistic regularities in semantic change, which the theory explained by assuming that they are the outcome of similar cognitive and communicative processes across languages. This has a number of consequences,
- 16. salient among which is the idea that meanings can be predicted to become increasingly pragmatic, procedural, and metatextual. More specifically, a significant number of observed meaning changes appear to instantiate the following clines, referred to as ‘‘semantic–pragmatic tendencies’’: (i) truth-conditionalWnon-truth-conditional; (ii) contentWcontent/proceduralWprocedural; (iii) scope-within-propositionWscope-over-propositionWscope-over-discourse; (iv) non-subjectiveWsubjectiveWintersubjective (Traugott and Dasher, 2002: 40).1 Figure 1.1. Model of the Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC; Traugott, 1999: 96) (M ¼ coded meaning; C ¼ conceptual structure) from Traugott and Dasher (2002: 38). 1 These clines represent a revision of three, by now very well known, tendencies posited in Traugott (1989: 34–35), viz. (I) Meanings based in the external described situation W meanings based in the internal (evaluative/perceptual/cognitive) described situation; (II) Meanings based in the external or internal described situation W meanings based in the textual and metalinguistic situation; (III) Meanings tend to become increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective belief state/attitude toward the proposition. 2 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 17. Most recent discussions in the fields of diachronic semantics and pragmatics revolve, as far as we can tell, around refining this paradigm. In particular, alternative proposals center on four key issues, which we shall elaborate on in the remainder of this introduction, highlighting the contribution made by the present volume. 1.1. What pragmatic entities are involved? The first issue concerns the nature and likely sequence of the pragmatic entities involved in the model, for example, the role of generalized versus particularized conversational implicatures (PCIs) in language change and their relationship to the issues of propagation and actualization. In fact, reflection on diachronic models for change has led to renewed discussion of the characteristics of key pragmatic notions, such as that of implicature. Thus, the three-stage model outlined in the IITSC, whereby semantic change would proceed from PCI via GCI to coded meaning, has been criticized, for instance, by Hansen and Waltereit (2006: 248), in whose opinion: in formulating their model of semantic change, Levinson (1995, 2000) as well as Traugott and Dasher (2002) redefine the notion of GCIs. From being a purely pragmatic phenomenon, GCIs, as understood in connection with the macro-sequence under review, become something more akin to the phenomena of either propagation or actualization of specific linguistic changes. The authors present an alternative proposal, grounded in the assumption that PCIs are ‘‘prototypically in the communicative foreground of messages, whereas generalized conversa- tional implicatures are prototypically backgrounded’’ (Hansen and Waltereit, 2006: 235). The sequence PCI-GCI-coded meaning is argued to be rare, most cases of semantic change being either instances of a PCI semanticizing directly (PCI-coded meaning) or of a GCI semanticizing, but only after having being foregrounded as a PCI (GCI-PCI-coded meaning). Indeed, the necessity of an intermediate GCI stage would seem to simply preclude semantic change based on metaphor, for the latter relies, in the Gricean view, on ostensive flouting of the quality maxim, a maxim which according to Levinson (2000: 74) cannot generate GCIs at all. In those cases where a PCI does turn into a GCI, it is, in fact, likely that it will not become fully semanticized (PCI- CGI-*coded meaning). In other words, the role of the different types of implicature in meaning change is a good deal more nuanced than the IITSC model would suggest. The issue of the nature of the pragmatic entities involved in change is addressed from a different angle by Schwenter and Waltereit (forthcoming). These authors provide an outline of the evolution of the additive particle too and some of its counterparts in Spanish and German, to show how counter-argumentative uses of the particle in novel discourse contexts can override the additive presupposition normally associated with such particles. Accommodating that Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 3
- 18. presupposition becomes too costly and leads to reanalyzing the too element as a new form- function pairing. The initial diachronic examples in bridging contexts are plausibly interpretable as conveying the additive meaning of too, but the adversative properties of the dialogal discourse context appear to have led hearers to understand too as expressing a new, rhetorically strategic meaning with strong counter-argumentative force. In a similar vein, Eckardt (this volume) proposes that language change may be triggered, not just by implicatures, but also by unwarranted presuppositions. She shows that, antedating the emergence of the contemporary senses of certain words, one finds uses of those words in which their presuppositions are violated, in the sense that they contradict common world knowledge. Eckardt refers to such instances as ‘‘little pragmatic accidents’’. Many such ‘‘accidents’’ may best be repaired by a listener who hypothesizes that the problematic item is in fact being used in a new sense. According to this author, such utterances create a pragmatic overload: under a conservative interpretation, they will trigger presuppositions that the listener cannot accommodate because they do not make sense. Thus, the listener can either (a) be uncharitable and refuse to interpret the utterance at all, (b) face the pragmatic overload and attempt to reconceptualize the world such that the presupposition is consistent, or (c) hypothesize a new meaning for parts of the utterance, including the item that gave rise to the problematic presupposition. Proposals such as these raise the further issue of the role and scope of the Uniformitarian Principle in diachronic semantics and pragmatics. Within the field of linguistics, the Uniformitarian Principle consists in the assumption that the processes underlying instances of language change in the past were essentially the same as those that can be seen to operate today (e.g., Labov, 1994: 21). Among the contributors to the present volume, Eckardt explicitly argues that a virtue of her analysis is its conformity with the Uniformitarian Principle, and many of the remaining contributors tacitly rely on that principle in their analyses. However, while the principle can probably be uncontroversially applied in the study of phonological change, for instance, given that the physiological properties of speech have not changed, it becomes more problematic in the analysis of meaning change; for, as a number of scholars have argued, speech acts and events, norms of politeness, principles of text structure, and conversational routines are by no means directly comparable neither across contemporary cultures nor across different historical stages of a given culture or society (e.g., Wierzbicka, 1991, 2006; Jacobs and Jucker, 1995; Arnovick, 1999; Scollon and Scollon, 2001). To the extent that this is true, how can we be justified in assuming that patterns of inference, and hence the fundamental pragmatic entities underlying them, such as presuppositions and implicatures, were similar to those that we take to be operative in contemporary Western discourse? In those cases where the nature of both an older ‘‘source’’ meaning and a newer ‘‘target’’ meaning of a given linguistic item or construction is well established, it seems legitimate to suppose that the motivations for and mechanisms of extension/change which would most plausibly get us from source to target according to contemporary patterns of inference are likely to have been likewise instrumental in 4 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 19. bringing about the change in the past.2 As soon as reconstruction is involved to a more significant extent, we are on shakier ground, however. For this reason, as current theorizing about diachronic semantics and pragmatics, as exemplified by the contributions to this volume, develops and is refined, there can be little doubt that the field would benefit from being informed to a greater extent by insights from ‘‘pragmaphilology’’ (Jacobs and Jucker, 1995) or ‘‘historical discourse analysis proper’’ (Brinton, 2001), that is, the synchronic study of discourse–pragmatic structures and functions and their corresponding means of expression in older texts. At present, however, there appears to be relatively little overlap among practitioners of the two disciplines. 1.2. What are the respective roles of the speaker and the hearer? A second major issue in diachronic semantics and pragmatics concerns the redefinition of the respective roles of speakers/writers and addressees/readers in the process of innovation. In particular, a set of proposals criticizes the speaker-based nature of the IITSC approach. As noted by Traugott (1999: 95): Although it recognizes the importance of guiding addresses to an interpretation [ . . . ] nevertheless the assumption of IITSC is that the speaker/writer does most of the work of innovation, not the hearer/reader. The idea is that the speaker/writer tries out a new use exploiting available implicatures. If the innovative use succeeds, the hearer/reader will interpret the intention correctly, and possibly experiment in similar ways in producing speech/writing. But rarely does the act of interpretation itself lead directly to innovation. Although this is to some extent a classic chicken-and-egg problem, Traugott’s assumption has been challenged by several scholars, among whom the authors of the two parallel studies already mentioned above, both proposing a model of semantic change based on the diachronically less used notion of presupposition. In the view of both Schwenter and Waltereit (forthcoming) and Eckardt (this volume), hearers who are unable or unwilling to accommodate presuppositions assume a novel interpretation of a former presupposition trigger and eventually pass this new interpretation on to other people, thereby changing the language. According to Schwenter and Waltereit, a hearer who is confronted with an utterance and assigns an interpretation to it that deviates from that utterance’s literal meaning has, in principle, two options: (i) assume that regular pragmatic operations, such as 2 Even this cannot be taken for granted, however: when scholars rely on their semantic–pragmatic intuitions, competing mechanisms may sometimes be invoked with equal probability to account for one and the same instance of change. Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 5
- 20. conversational inference and the accommodation of presuppositions, mediate between the literal meaning and the chosen nonliteral interpretation; (ii) assume a novel conventional meaning for some element of that utterance. In that case, fewer pragmatic computations, and/or less costly ones, may be required, since there is no need anymore for them to mediate between the chosen interpretation and the traditional (previous) conventional meaning. If a hearer chooses (ii) and uses the novel form-meaning pairing in his/her own discourse, the language will have changed. Assuming that interpretive efforts by the listener are at the heart of ‘‘Avoid-Pragmatic- Overload’’-induced changes, Eckardt (this volume) moreover suggests a hearer-driven conception of the trend toward subjectification. Earlier approaches, she argues, leave open the question whether the subjective element is pressed into an utterance as a kind of Sprachnot phenomenon by the speaker or enters the meaning of words by an interpretive effort of the listener. Eckardt suggests that, in at least some cases, the subjective element enters the language via the interpretive efforts of the listener, not because listeners are constantly searching to see the speaker’s soul through his utterances, but because in the case of a truly senseless utterance the charitable listener will try to make at least some sense of that utterance. It is much more implausible to perceive subjectification as a speaker-driven process. Uttering incoherent sentences and hoping that the listener will grab your message does not seem a rational communicative strategy (Eckardt, this volume). Hansen (2008: 76) likewise argues that the reanalyses performed by hearers may be unintended by speakers, and that they may even, on some occasions, result from clear misunderstandings on the hearer’s part. In particular, theories that attribute a central role to the metonymical processes cannot afford to ignore this possibility, in so far as literal and metonymical meanings will often be mutually compatible. To take a simple example, if the change from Latin TESTIMONIUM (testimony) W French témoin (witness) came about as suggested by Koch (2004: 16f ), namely via the (necessary) metonymical link between the existence of testimony and that of a witness, in contexts where utterances such as (1) would be produced, then it is unlikely that it would have been speaker driven: (1) [Judge:] Audiamus testimonium proximum! ‘Let’s hear the next piece of testimony!’ Even more obviously, while the change responsible for the two currently competing meanings of the Danish noun bjørnetjeneste (literally ‘bear favor’), ‘a favor that has unintended negative results’ W ‘a really big favor’, can be attributed to the non-transparency of that noun, and hence its potential ambiguity in contexts such as (2), it is highly implausible that speakers familiar with the original, negatively loaded, meaning could be held responsible for the rise of the innovative, positively loaded, interpretation. In this case, there can be little doubt that the process must have 6 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 21. been driven by hearers who were unfamiliar with the intended meaning and who were therefore forced to make conjectures: (2) Peter overtalte chefen til at give mig opgaven. Det var sørme en bjørnetjeneste! Literally: ‘Peter persuaded the boss to give me the task. That was really a bear-favor!’ 1.3. In what types of context does semantic–pragmatic change take place? The third rapidly evolving area of discussion concerns the characterization of the contexts in which inferencing takes place. Invited inferencing and context-induced reinterpretation both assume pragmatic polysemy and ambiguity. In this respect a set of proposals have been advanced in the literature about such ambiguous contexts. Heine (2002: 86), for instance, proposes a series of four stages in semasiological change, and sees the pivotal stage as constituted by what he refers to as ‘‘bridging contexts’’, that is, contexts where the use of a given expression allows, in addition to its conventional meaning, an inference to an innovative meaning (see also Evans and Wilkins, 2000: 549; Enfield, 2005: 318).3 Putting more emphasis on structural constraints, Diewald (2002, 2006) proposes that ambiguity and structural factors accumulate in one context, which she calls a ‘‘critical context’’. An innovative element in the reflection on this topic has been the increasing awareness of the importance of taking interactional factors into account when defining the contexts for change, for instance, dialogic and contesting contexts evoking multiple viewpoints, turn-taking, and other interactional moves. The refinement of context characterization is a main thread throughout the papers in this volume. Such a refinement is operated at multiple levels: from linguistic features (co-text) to cognitive and/or interactional properties (context) to features of specific genres influencing semantic change (discourse tradition). At the linguistic level, Evans’, Jensen’s, and Romera’s papers offer fine-grained analyses of the formal and functional co-textual variables to which changes can be attributed. Thus, a detailed reconstruction of the change from aspect/mood marker to discourse particle in Morovo is related by Evans to the morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of the construction. In Jensen’s paper, the semantics of predicates is shown to interact with properties of specific slots in a topological model of Danish sentences, thereby affecting the development of the affirmative markers godt and vel; while in Romera’s contribution, a set of formal and functional variables are shown to contribute to the evolution of Spanish es que. 3 Whereas Heine (2002) assumes that the innovative (target) meaning is the intended one, Hansen (2008: 63) proposes that it is still backgrounded at this stage, and only foregrounded when the subsequent ‘‘switch-context’’ stage is reached. Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 7
- 22. The second level, that of cognition and interaction, which is not always given prominence in diachronic semantics and pragmatics studies, is central to many papers in the present volume: Hansen draws attention to what she calls ‘‘Janus-faced contexts’’, that is, contexts in which the cognitive contents of a negated clause are oriented simultaneously to previous and to upcoming discourse, and proposes that such contexts are crucial to the grammaticalization of bipartite sentence negation in French. Paradigmatic associations (also treated by Diewald et al. and Jensen) are argued to have predictive value by Estellès, who shows how paradigmatic pressures can lead to change. Bazzanella and Miecznikowski analyze how Italian allora has evolved from expressing referential (temporal) meaning to fulfilling a range of inferential functions, and argue that the driving forces in these changes should be sought among properties of spoken language in interaction (e.g., planning, recipient designed, discourse structuring) as well as among properties of co-constructed argumentational discourse (e.g., recurrent schemas of reasoning; the need to attribute conclusions and premises to participants and to monitor the degree of sharedness/ expectedness of standpoints at any moment of their negotiation; the direct relevance of dialogical reasoning to decisions about future actions). Similarly, Detges and Waltereit argue that discourse markers arise as the result of argumentational procedures in the negotiation in discourse, marking, for example, a change of activity or disagreement, while the polyphonic component in modal particles arises as the conventionalization of disputing the validity of a given proposition in dialogic exchanges. Finally, Beeching highlights the crucial role of concessive contexts in pragmaticalization processes such as the evolution of hedging and boosting particles in a variety of languages. At a more general level, Stathi’s study of the development of the German verb gehören (literally ‘belong to’) shows how discourse traditions (in this case, administrative and judicial texts) may influence change, an aspect previously discussed by Pons Borderı́a (2006). 1.4. What is the precise nature of and relationship among the observed tendencies of semantic–pragmatic change? The fourth issue revolves around both refining the clines (i) to (iv) identified above and understanding the relationship between such tendencies: for instance, the relationship between grammaticalization, scope, and subjectification (Company Company, 2006a,b; Traugott, forth- coming), or the issue of whether to define the evolution of pragmatic markers as an instance of grammaticalization (Brinton and Traugott, 2005; Diewald et al., this volume) or of pragmaticalization (Erman and Kotsinas, 1993; Dostie, 2004; Hansen, 2008: Chapter 3). With respect to the latter, those who argue that pragmatic markers are grammaticalized focus on the fact that the evolution of pragmatic markers will typically feature the decategorialization of the source item, some degree of phonological reduction of that source item, as well as subjectification and increased ‘‘procedurality’’ of its content. 8 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 23. Those scholars who prefer to describe pragmatic markers as ‘‘pragmaticalized’’, on the other hand, do so on the basis of Lehmann’s (1985) six classic parameters of grammaticalization, viz. phonological and/or semantic attrition, paradigmatization, obligatorification, scope reduction, syntagmatic coalescence, and syntagmatic fixation. According to Lehmann’s model, grammati- calized items will exhibit a high degree of several of these characteristics. As noted by Waltereit (2002: 1005), Eckardt (2003: 42), and Hansen (2008: 57f ), pragmatic markers as a class tend not to fulfill Lehmann’s criteria to any great extent. Rather, they typically exhibit scope increase, greater syntactic freedom, optionality, and strengthening of their pragmatic import. The former problem has to do with whether subjectification is necessarily part of, and unique to, the grammaticalization process, which, if true, raises questions about the scope of grammaticalized items. According to Traugott (1995) and Brinton and Traugott (2005), subjectification is at the very least a strong tendency in grammaticalization, particularly in its early stages (Traugott, 1995: 47), but it is nevertheless an independent process (Brinton and Traugott, 2005: 109; Traugott, forthcoming). Company Company (2006a) argues that subjectification is not just a semantic–pragmatic phenomenon, but actually constitutes a specific type of syntactic change as well, namely one that is characterized by scope increase and syntactic isolation, and she conceives of subjectification as a subtype of grammaticalization. It seems to us that what this author calls subjectification would largely be equivalent to what others describe as pragmaticalization, were it not for the fact that she deems the syntactic changes mentioned criterial, as opposed to just typical, of subjectification. However, the existence of items like the so- called modal particles that are a salient feature of the Continental Germanic languages appears to provide a strong argument against such a view, for while modal particles are indubitably subjectified as compared to their source items and also exhibit scope increase, they are nevertheless syntactically highly constrained. This debate raises the issue of the exact understanding of what is implied by notions such as grammaticalization and pragmaticalization: are these labels for specific processes of change, in which case they have independent theoretical status, or are they largely just convenient shorthands for the cumulative results of sets of frequently converging, but essentially independent, changes that linguistic items and constructions can undergo? If the former, we would expect there to be a rather strict separation between grammaticalized and pragmaticalized items. If the latter, we should not be surprised to find cases where either or both label(s) might seem appropriate. This would appear to be the case, for instance, with the Germanic modal particles mentioned above, which are characterized by scope increase, optionality, and pragmatic strengthening, but also – unlike discourse markers, for instance – by paradigmatization and syntagmatic fixation. The issues surrounding grammaticalization, pragmaticalization, and processes, such as subjectification which may be prominently associated with either, are highlighted in many of the papers in the present volume, which analyze the evolution of procedural meanings of various kinds. Thus, several papers feature different types of pragmatic markers as their object of study Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 9
- 24. (Bazzanella and Miecznikowski, Beeching, Detges and Waltereit, Eckardt, Estellès, Evans, Gehweiler, Jensen, Romera), while others are concerned with items and constructions expressing modality (Stathi), evidentiality (Diewald et al., Squartini), negation (Hansen), and relational meanings (Adler and Asnes). Saliently, Diewald at al. refine the grammaticalization model as the reinterpretation and abstraction of a relational semantic template from (i) referential to (ii) text- integrative/connective to (iii) indexical-grammatical function, exemplified by the evolution of evidentials and modal particles in German, while Detges and Waltereit’s tackle the thorny issue of the categorization of discourse markers versus modal particles, which the authors claim arise from different mechanisms of change. Their paper proposes a fine-tuning of the subjectification model by showing how and why different types of procedural meanings arise. 1.5. Concluding remarks We suggest that, in a number of ways, the present volume constitutes an important contribution to our current understanding of historical semantics and pragmatics: First, several papers in this collection revisit, in a diachronic perspective, key theoretical notions that are typically confined to the synchronic perspective, such as presuppositions (Eckardt), paradigms (Estellès), word order (Jensen), and discourse status (Hansen). This allows the authors to test and refine current models of semantic change and to provide innovative accounts of causes and motivations for linguistic changes. Second, the semantic domains covered by the case studies are ones that are generally considered central (spatiality, temporality, negation, modality, evidentiality, subjectivity, scalarity, intensification, and concession). Third, the volume commends itself not only by virtue of the variety of approaches to meaning that are represented here, from prototype theory (Bazzanella and Miecznikowski) to monosemy (Adler and Asnes), but also very much by the range of data adduced from languages other than English (several Romance languages, German, Danish, and Oceanic languages). 2. SUMMARIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTIONS The papers collected in this volume originate in a workshop on Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics, organized by the volume editors at the 18th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Montreal, August 2007). In her article, ‘‘Avoid Pragmatic Overload,’’ Regine Eckardt suggests that the role of pragmatics in language change might not be restricted to implicature, but that presupposition (failure) is equally a driving force in meaning change. It is well known that utterances may carry 10 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 25. presuppositions which, if new to the hearer, will have to be accommodated. This is unproblematic in all those cases where the accommodated information is plausible and uncontroversial. Problems arise, however, when the speaker relies on presuppositions which are implausible, controversial, or hard to reconcile with other pieces of knowledge. Eckardt proposes that when faced with the option of accommodating the impossible, hearers may instead prefer to reanalyze the meaning of parts of the utterance. Thus, hearers avoid pragmatic overload (problematic presuppositions) and hypothesize new meanings instead. The proposed analysis is supported by several attested cases of semantic change to which it can be fruitfully applied. Among others, the author discusses the reanalysis of German intensifying selbst (-self ) as a focus particle (even), and of German fast (immovably tight) as an approximative (almost), as well as the development of English even from a level adjective to a focus marker, and she takes a brief look at the case of Italian perfino which likewise develops an ‘even’-like reading from its earlier sense ‘through, to the end’ (Visconti, 2005). For each item, it can be argued that the turning point of the development is characterized by the appearance of uses where the presuppositions of the sentence, if spelled out, are tantamount to contradictory, or at least highly implausible, information. The proposal confirms the vital role of pragmatics in language change and identifies yet another type of pragmatic enrichment of utterances that has, so far, not been widely explored in diachronic linguistics. In their paper, ‘‘Diachronic Pathways and Pragmatic Strategies: Different Types of Pragmatic Particles from a Diachronic Point of View’’, Ulrich Detges and Richard Waltereit address one of the main concerns of research on discourse markers, modal particles, and related elements, namely the problem of a neat categorical delimitation between these items, by considering whether the synchronic difference between discourse markers and modal particles can be accounted for in diachronic terms. Do discourse markers and modal particles arise from different mechanisms of change? Their cases are the cognate French and Spanish particles bien, both of which originate in adverbs meaning ‘well’. French bien functions, among other things, as a modal particle. By contrast, Spanish bien is a discourse marker. It is widely accepted that discourse markers serve the purpose of coordinating the joint construal of discourse, and according to Detges and Waltereit, this is directly reflected in their diachronic evolution: thus, the Spanish DM bien is the routinized residue of negotiations about the next move in conversation. Moreover, their analysis suggests that discourse markers are a subset of a much wider range of routines that human beings have at their disposal for the coordination of joint activities. Thus, it is not surprising that the diachronic evolution of a discourse marker should follow the same pathways as do such routines. By contrast, modal particles function at the speech-act level and typically make reference to the hearer’s attitudes concerning the validity of the speech act. More broadly, the results presented in this paper imply that there are levels of generalization about semantic change below the overarching tendencies of subjectification. At the same time, they provide very specific justification for these levels of generalization, and ultimately for subjectification itself. Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 11
- 26. Eva Skafte Jensen’s article, ‘‘Context Sensitive Changes: The Development of the Affirmative Markers ‘godt’(good) and ‘vel’ (well) in Danish’’, gives a detailed account of how these Danish adverbials (meaning, respectively, ‘good’ and ‘well’) came to be used as markers of affirmation. Special interest is paid to the role played by the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic context of the lexical items in question. One influential factor is the semantics of the predicates of the sentences in which the items occur. Predicates conveying subjective meanings and meanings of modal possibility (e.g., modal verbs, verbs such as føle ‘feel’, vide ‘know’, etc.) seem to provide good conditions for the development of the affirmative function of the adverbials in question. Another, less frequently discussed, contextual factor is provided by the rules of word order (topology) in Danish. Jensen argues that the properties of specific slots and places in the topological model of a Danish sentence have direct bearing not only on the synchronic interpretation of the adverbials in question, but also on their possible diachronic reinterpretation as markers of affirmation. A third contextual factor is of a pragmatic nature, as it is argued that the developments of godt and vel may be described as ‘‘the conventionalization of a conversational implicature’’. Thus, these adverbials often occur in utterances where there might be some doubt as to the validity of the positive value of the propositional contents, thus giving rise to the implicature that ‘someone might think that the State-of-Affairs is not the case’. As a result of this, affirmative godt and vel enter into a small paradigm of polarity alongside negation and zero. The cross-linguistic implications of this account are evaluated, as some languages seem to prefer having adverbials meaning ‘good’ and ‘well’ develop into markers of affirmation or similar (e.g., Detges and Waltereit, this volume). ‘‘Procatalepsis and the Etymology of Hedging and Boosting Particles’’ by Kate Beeching sets out to explore a cognitive basis for procatalepsis, ‘a figure by which an opponent’s objections are anticipated and answered’, and to argue that the evolution of hedging/boosting particles in a number of languages may be explained by reference to it. While the role of metaphor and metonymy in language change is well documented, other classical figures such as synecdoche and procatalepsis and their relationship with cognition and semantic–pragmatic change have been less thoroughly investigated. By conceding certain arguments, speakers can strengthen their position and make it easier to defend, while at the same time exhibiting a sense of fair play. In a similar manner, a procataleptically derived particle simultaneously hedges and boosts the assertion associated with it. Beeching’s paper argues that the metonymic contiguity of terms like though with contexts relating to the negotiation of meaning and the ‘‘Cardinal Concessive frame’’ (X – statement, Xu – concession, Y – potential refutation) (Couper-Kuhlen and Thompson, 2000) so commonly invoked in everyday interaction has led them to be used in situations where X and Xu are unexpressed. Though thus retains a concessive sense, but functions simultaneously as a hedge and as a booster. What is more, this procataleptic tendency is a cross-linguistic phenomenon which affects similar adversative and concessive conjunctions and adverbs in different languages, such as French quand meme, Glasgow but and German aber. While the etymologies, the 12 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 27. polysemies, and the position in the clause of these various adverbs differ, the fundamental cognitive reflex depending on the Cardinal Concessive, which is part of our everyday conceptualization of events, is very similar in all of them. This suggests that the underlying motivation for the recruitment of such usages is universal, arising from social interactional exigencies related to questions of face. The study by Carla Bazzanella and Johanna Miecznikowski, ‘‘Central/Peripheral Functions of ‘allora’ and ‘Overall Pragmatic Configuration,’’’ suggests that Italian allora (‘so’, ‘then’) has considerably expanded its functional spectrum from the 13th century up to the present day. Starting out from temporal functions (simultaneity and consecution), the following functions have been added (in order of diachronic appearance): (i) functions in the domain of causality, (ii) inferential-evidential functions, and (iii) text and interaction structuring functions. Functional expansion has been accompanied by semantic shifts, among others a deictic shift (distal W proximal), as well as by syntactic shifts (in particular, ana-/cataphorical adverb W connective at utterance margins W iconic segment-initial connective). In this development, the use of allora in hypothetical constructions – which in themselves are polyfunctional and often potentially ambiguous – seems to have played an important role. To explain allora’s semantic-functional expansion, it is useful to posit (a) a basic relational semantics of the lexeme, which is quite stable over time and (b) general semantic/cognitive principles that account for the relative proximity of certain semantic domains, and therefore the probability of a (metaphorical) shift from one domain of meaning to the other. However, (a) and (b) merely delineate potential paths of development; in the explanation of change, they have to be integrated with specific hypotheses about the driving forces of change. Bazzanella and Miecznikowski strongly emphasize the importance of pragmatic factors as driving forces, that is, functional pressures arising in recurrent situations of use. In the case of allora, strongly argumentational dialogue types seem to have played a key role. In the analysis offered, the shifts mentioned above are related to both general properties of spoken language in interaction and more specific properties of co-construed argumentational discourse. The action of these factors as driving forces can be accounted for if one assumes that the semantic and functional potential of a linguistic item corresponds to a prototypically organized set of features which, in language use, is actualized as an ‘overall pragmatic configuration’, in which some potential features become more relevant than others, in congruence with contextual parameters, and are thus strengthened by recurrent use in certain constructions and situation types. Unlike routinization (Hopper, 1987) and context (Hopper and Traugott, 1993 [2003]), both traditionally regarded as triggers of grammaticalization, a factor such as paradigmatic relations has mainly been seen as responsible for the spread of change, not as the locus where changes take place. Against this background, Maria Estelles’ article on ‘‘The Importance of Paradigms in Grammaticalization: Spanish Digressive Markers ‘por cierto’ and ‘a propósito’’’ highlights their role as a possible cause of grammaticalization processes. The importance of paradigms is illustrated by tracing back the history of the two most frequent markers of digression in Spanish, Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 13
- 28. namely por cierto and a propósito (by the way). These particles, despite rather different origins and evolutions, seem, in the course of the 19th century, to become integrated into a paradigm of digression. Since then, the use of por cierto, formerly restricted to the intra-sentential level, has been extended to the textual level, already reached by a propósito. In turn, a propósito came to be used in appositions, an environment that was previously specific to por cierto. Magdalena Romera’s ‘‘The Multiple Origin of ‘es que’ in Modern Spanish: Diachronic Evidence’’ considers how an expression such as es que (it is that), originally part of a structure that expresses existential meaning, ends up being used by itself as a functional unit to introduce elaboration–reinterpretation values. Her proposal is that constructions with es que initially express existential meaning and a more elaborated clarification of the content of a previous segment, but later the elaboration allows for a more subjective interpretation in terms of the speaker’s interpretation, which in turn could be understood as an explanation for what was just said. At the same time, es que constructions lose their subject due to a process of loss of referentiality in the elements placed in that position. Initially, subjects are highly referential and can be related anaphorically to the previous content, but later on they are simply elements that anticipate the focalized content expressed in the subordinate clause. Chronologically, these two processes go together. From Early Spanish (1200–1300) up to the 16th century, es que constructions are existential and elaborative structures. The first cases of interpretative uses are found in 1500 and generalize in the 17th century. The same can be said of the path from integrated constructions (i.e., es que constructions with a subject) to nonintegrated ones (i.e., es que constructions without a subject). No cases of subjectless constructions are found in Early Spanish and only a few cases in 1400. The first uses of es que structures as we know them in Modern Spanish appear in 1500 in monologues and at the end of that century in dialogues. The subject position is allowed to be left empty in the 16th century. Bethwyn Evans’ paper, ‘‘From Aspect/Mood Marker to Discourse Particle: Reconstructing Syntactic and Semantic Change,’’ examines the reanalysis of an aspect/mood marker as a discourse connective particle from the perspectives of both syntactic and semantic change. Evidence of the change is found in the system of subject marking in Marovo, an Oceanic language of the Solomon Islands. Marovo has preverbal markers which indicate the person and number of the subject argument and which occur primarily in only two types of constructions: negative verbal declarative clauses and verbal clauses with an initial discourse connective particle. These unusual conditions on the presence of subject marking in Marovo are shown to reflect its historical development. Through comparison of Marovo with other closely related Oceanic languages, it is demonstrated that subject marking in negative clauses is archaic, reflecting original constructions in which subject markers occurred within the verb complex alongside preverbal markers of aspect/ mood and negation. The use of subject markers with discourse connective particles reflects the same original construction, but in this case the reanalysis of an aspect/mood marker as a discourse connective particle has resulted in the subsequent extension of subject markers to use with 14 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 29. discourse connective particles in general. A detailed reconstruction of the change, informed by accepted models of syntactic and semantic reanalysis, suggests that it was motivated by both the morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of the construction. While the reanalysis appears to have been triggered by structural ambiguity resulting from a chance homophony of forms, semantic and pragmatic aspects of the construction also facilitated the change. In ‘‘The Grammaticalization Channels of Evidentials and Modal Particles in German: Integration in Textual Structures as a Common Feature’’, Gabriele Diewald, Marijana Kresic, and Elena Smirnova are concerned with the grammaticalization of German evidential constructions and modal particles. In present day German, these items serve as linguistic means for expressing different grammatical contents, and, at first sight, do not seem to have anything in common beyond being two evolving grammatical categories. The authors’ first concern in this paper is to argue that both German evidential periphrases and modal particles serve as grammatical markers. As such, they meet two criteria that are proposed as definitional of grammatical signs: (a) indexical potential and (b) paradigmatic integration. The second aim of the paper is to reconstruct a diachronic developmental path for each category. Thus, the grammaticalization processes of individual elements are summarized in a unified grammaticalization channel for each category. The third goal of the paper is to show that there are common developmental tendencies in the grammaticalization of even such different linguistic elements as evidentials and modal particles. The intention behind this is to propose that these common features may be powerful indicators of grammaticalization in general. The starting point is the assumption that, in their development, these elements follow general tendencies and clines established in grammaticaliza- tion theory, and the authors show (i) that German evidentials and modal particles develop by reinterpretation of, and abstraction from, a relational semantic template and (ii) that this development results in the indexical-grammatical interpretation of that template, which is reached via an intermediate stage of text-integrative/connective interpretation. By way of generalization, the authors assume that their model of three successive stages in grammaticalization (which describe the following semiotic-functional changes in a sign: (i) referential function W (ii) text- integrative/connective function W (iii) indexical-grammatical function) is applicable to all grammaticalization processes. Moreover, they emphasize the particular importance of the second stage in grammaticalization processes – the integration of a sign in specific text structures whereby the sign comes to serve text-connective functions. In his article, ‘‘Evidentiality, Epistemicity and Their Diachronic Connections to Nonfac- tuality,’’ Mario Squartini investigates the diachronic relationship between evidentiality and epistemicity in the pragmatic and semantic evolution of some Romance forms, including seem- verbs, hearsay markers such as the American Spanish dizque ‘allegedly, supposedly’, and inflectional verb forms having epistemic meanings or being used as evidential strategies (the Romance synthetic futures and conditionals). Despite their diverse origins, all these forms evolve in similar diachronic directions, demonstrating the crucial role of nonfactuality in the evolution of Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 15
- 30. the evidential meaning connected to hearsay and reportive markers. Nonfactuality, on the other hand, turns out to be negatively correlated with the diachronic evolution of conjectural and inferential markers, a fact which raises empirical questions with respect to the much-debated interpretation of inferentiality as an intermediate area in the crucial boundary between epistemicity and evidentiality. Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen’s paper on ‘‘The Grammaticalization of Negative Reinforcers in Old and Middle French: A Discourse-Functional Approach’’ presents evidence that key stages in the diachronic evolution of clausal negation in French should be understood as governed by discourse-functional constraints on the flow of information. Specifically, concerning the synchronic properties of Old and Middle French negation, she argues that clauses negated by ne . . . mie/pas were constrained to be discourse-old, as defined by Birner (2006), and that, while the proposition expressed by such clauses need not be believed, it should be such that the speaker could assume that it was either already activated in the short-term memory of the hearer or accessible to activation based on other propositions thus activated. This analysis presents the advantage of being compatible with what is known about the uses of different forms of negation in a number of contemporary Romance vernaculars where variation is still maintained between simple preverbal negators and reinforced expressions which in several cases are etymologically identical to the French forms. The author suggests, further, a diachronic scenario capable of explaining the subsequent unmarking of reinforced negation in French, her proposal being that so-called Janus-faced contexts, that is, contexts that are at one and the same time backwards and forwards oriented in terms of the flow of information in discourse, constituted the key bridging contexts that allowed for the reanalysis of the reinforced negators. The advantages of the proposed scenario are that it not only relies on precisely those discourse-functional constraints that were argued to govern the use of negative reinforcers at the stage where they were still conceptually and textually marked, but it is also more precise than existing pragmatically based explanations. Silvia Adler and Maria Asnes, in their ‘‘A Roots Journey of a French Preposition,’’ propose a diachronic investigation of the French preposition jusqu’à (meaning ‘until’, ‘up to’, ‘to’). Their study reveals that all the present usages of jusqu’à – spatial, temporal, scalar, and quantificational – already coexist at the early stages of French, which supports the hypothesis of the monosemicity of this preposition. Thus, all the possible readings of PPs headed by jusqu’à share one semantic primitive which has to do with the notions of a path and of a culminating point (representing the limit of the path). It is the nature of the limit provided by the context which accounts for the different readings of jusqu’à. This suggests, in other words, that the spatiotemporal value cannot be considered as the core meaning of this preposition: in the case of jusqu’à, there is no real evolution from spatial to nonspatial, from concrete to abstract, but rather one core sense, in itself abstract, which is applicable to various domains, such as space, time, and scalarity. All of these conserve the idea of an axis, a continuum, and an oriented scale. 16 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 31. Elke Gehweiler’s ‘‘The Grammaticalization of Privative Adjectives: The Case of ‘mere’’’ argues that the present-day English adjectival intensifier/downtoner mere evolved from a privative adjective with the meaning ‘pure, unmixed’ through a process of grammaticalization and subjectification. The paper first discusses the synchronic status of mere, showing that mere is a peripheral member of the word class adjective and is restricted to only a very limited number of patterns in PDE. In the second part of the paper, the diachronic development of mere from privative adjective to downtoner is discussed on the basis of diachronic corpus data. Most importantly, it is argued that the ambiguity of mere in attributive position in certain uses triggered a reanalysis of mere as intensifier, which was followed by the lexicalization of its new meaning. The paper suggests that the case of mere is not unique and that other privative adjectives have developed more grammatical and more subjective meanings in a similar way. Katerina Stathi’s ‘‘The Origin of Semantic Change in Discourse Tradition: A Case Study’’ shows how the textual context or discourse tradition in which semantic change of a lexical item originates may be reflected in the meaning of that item. The German verb gehören (literally ‘belong to’) expresses necessity and obligation in a construction with the passive participle. Diachronic evidence reveals that this meaning arose in contexts of law and administration via pragmatic inference. A synchronic corpus study shows that a significant proportion of the participles in this construction refers to ‘‘negative’’ actions (which can be subsumed under the notion of punishment) on the patient. It is claimed that the dominant meaning of the participles reflects the original context in which gehören developed the meaning of necessity and obligation. This is described as an instance of persistence. REFERENCES Arnovick, L. K. (1999). Diachronic pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Birner, B. J. (2006). ‘‘Semantic and pragmatic contributions to information status’’, in M.-B. M. Hansen and K. Turner (eds.), Explorations in the semantics/pragmatics interface. Special issue of Acta Lingvistica Hafniensia, 38: 14–32. Brinton, L. J. (2001). ‘‘Historical discourse analysis’’, in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. E. Hamilton (eds.), Handbook of discourse analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, 138–160. Brinton, L. J. and E. T. Traugott (2005). Lexicalization and language change, (research surveys in linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Company Company, C. (2006). ‘‘Subjectification of verbs into discourse markers: Semantic–pragmatic change only?’’. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 20: 97–121. Company Company, C. (2006). ‘‘Zero in syntax, ten in pragmatics: Subjectification as syntactic cancellation’’, in A. Athanasiadou, C. Canakis and B. Cornillie (eds.), Subjectification: Various paths to subjectivity, (cognitive linguistics research 31). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 375–397. Couper-Kuhlen, E. and S. A. Thompson (2000). ‘‘Concessive patterns in conversation’’, in E. Couper-Kuhlen and B. Kortmann (eds.), Cause–condition–concession–contrast: Cognitive and discourse perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 381–410. Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 17
- 32. Diewald, G. (2002). ‘‘A model for relevant types of contexts in grammaticalization’’, in I. Wischer and G. Diewald (eds.), New reflections on grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 103–120. Diewald, G. (2006). ‘‘Context types in grammaticalization as constructions’’, Constructions, SV1-9. http:// www.constructions-online.de/ Dostie, G. (2004). Pragmaticalisation et marqueurs discursifs. Analyse sémantique et traitement lexicologique. Brussels: De Boeck/Duculot. Eckardt, R. (2003). The structure of change. Meaning change under reanalysis. Habilitation thesis, Berlin: Humboldt Universität (Revised version published in 2006 by Oxford University Press). Enfield, N. J. (2005). ‘‘Micro- and macro-dimensions in linguistic systems’’, in S. Marmaridou, K. Nikiforidou and E. Antonopoulou (eds.), Reviewing linguistic thought: Converging trends for the 21st century (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs, Vol. 161). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 313–325. Erman, B. and U.-B. Kotsinas (1993). ‘‘Pragmaticalization: The case of ba’ and you know’’. Studier i modern språkvetenskap 10: 76–93. Evans, N. and D. Wilkins (2000). ‘‘In the mind’s ear: The semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian languages’’. Language 76: 546–592. Grice, H. P. (1989[1975]). ‘‘Logic and conversation’’, in his studies in the way of words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 22–40. Hansen, M.-B. M. (2008), Particles at the semantics/pragmatics interface: Synchronic and diachronic issues. A study with special reference to the French phasal adverbs, (Current research in the semantics– pragmatics interface, Vol. 19). Oxford/Bingley: Elsevier/Emerald. Hansen, M.-B. M. and R. Waltereit (2006). ‘‘GCI theory and language change’’, in M.-B. M. Hansen and K. Turner (eds.), Explorations in the semantics/pragmatics interface. Special issue of Acta Lingvistica Hafniensia, 38: 235–268. Heine, B. (2002). ‘‘On the role of context in grammaticalization’’, in I. Wischer and G. Diewald (eds.), New reflections on grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 103–120. Hopper, P. J. (1987). ‘‘Emergent grammar’’. Berkeley Linguistics Society 13: 139–157. Hopper, P. J. and E. C. Traugott (2003). Grammaticalization. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jacobs, A. and A. H. Jucker (1995). ‘‘The historical perspective in pragmatics’’, in A. H. Jucker (ed.), Historical pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 3–33. Koch, P. (2004). ‘‘Metonymy between pragmatics, reference, and diachrony’’. Metaphorik.de 7: 6–54. www.metaphorik.de Labov, W. (1994). Principles of linguistic change, internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Lehmann, C. (1985). ‘‘Grammaticalization: Synchronic variation and diachronic change’’. Lingua e stile XX (3): 303–318. Levinson, S. C. (1995). ‘‘Three levels of meaning’’, in F. R. Palmer (ed.), Grammar and meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 90–115. Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings. The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Harvard, MA: MIT Press. Pons Borderı́a, S. (2006). ‘‘From pragmatics to semantics: esto es in formulaic expressions’’, in M.-B. M. Hansen and K. Turner (eds.), Explorations in the semantics/pragmatics interface. Special issue of Acta Lingvistica Hafniensia, 38: 180–206. Schwenter, S. A. and Waltereit, R. (forthcoming). ‘‘Presupposition accommodation and language change’’, in H. Cuyckens, K. Davidse and L. Vandelanotte (eds.), Subjectification, intersubjectification and grammaticalization, (Topics in English linguistics). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Scollon, R. and S. W. Scollon (2001). Intercultural communication. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. 18 Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
- 33. Traugott, E. C. (1989). ‘‘On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: An example of subjectification in semantic change’’. Language 57: 33–65. Traugott, E. C. (1995). ‘‘Subjectification in grammaticalization’’, in D. Stein (ed.), Subjectivity and subjectivisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 31–54. Traugott, E. C. (1999). ‘‘The role of pragmatics in semantic change’’, in J. Verschueren (ed.), Pragmatics in 1998: Selected Papers from the 6th International Pragmatics Conference. Vol. 2. Antwerp: International Pragmatics Association, 93–102. Traugott, E. C. (forthcoming). ‘‘Revisiting subjectification and intersubjectification’’, in H. Cuyckens, K. Davidse and L. Vandelanotte (eds.), Subjectification, intersubjectification and grammaticalization, (Topics in English linguistics). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Traugott, E. C. and R. B. Dasher (2002). Regularity in semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Visconti, J. (2005). ‘‘On the origins of scalar particles in Italian’’, in M.-B. M. Hansen and C. Rossari (eds.), The evolution of pragmatic markers. Special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 6(2): 237–261. Waltereit, R. (2002). ‘‘Imperatives, interruption in conversation, and the rise of discourse markers: A study of Italian guarda’’. Linguistics 40 (5): 987–1010. Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wierzbicka, A. (2006). English. Meaning and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics 19
- 35. Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics Edited by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved. 2 APO: AVOID PRAGMATIC OVERLOAD Regine Eckardt 1. CHANGE WITHOUT MYSTERIES Much recent work in historical linguistics, notably historical pragmatics, is focused on the mysterious moment where a new item or construction sees the day of the light. Theoretically speaking, such a situation should have the following characteristics: (1) There is a speaker who makes an utterance: u u is still part of the old language stage Lold The hearer understands: uu uu is part of the new stage Lnew If we really want to capture moments of change, we must assume that the hearer was not already competent in the new language stage Lnew before s/he understood uu. The innovation is constituted by the hearer parsing the utterance and deriving a meaning in a way that differs from what the speaker had in mind with her utterance u. There are several proposals in the literature about how situations of this kind can arise. One very simple scenario really avoids all difficulties by claiming that new language stages typically come about by innovative acts by the speaker. The speaker can decide to use language in innovative ways, and to the extent that the hearer can make sense of an innovative utterance, and adopts the suggested underlying pattern, the hearer confirms and adopts the new language stage. This view is already inherent in traditional work in language history (von der Gabelentz, 1891; Paul, 1920) and it is moreover extremely plausible, because we can observe innovative utterances on a daily basis. Yet, when we think about the origin of the more routine parts of language – aspect forms, particles, tenses – it is unlikely that all these have come about by witty remarks of creative speakers.
- 36. According to another scenario, innovations can enter a language because hearers are incompetent, simply misunderstanding the intended linguistic structure of the speaker’s utterance. Indeed, we know that an increased rate of potential misunderstandings, for example, in large L2 communities, may lead to increased speed in language change but there are interesting cases in the histories of languages where no such driving force would be known. In recent work, Traugott and Dasher (2002) have devised another detailed scenario which illustrates the above type of situation. Traugott in fact was the first to point out that pragmatic processes are a driving force in language change (König and Traugott, 1988; Traugott, 1988), and this is explored in her theory of implicature-based language change. An utterance can mean more than its literal meaning (implicatures). Implicated information can turn into lexically denoted information (generalized invited inferences, GIINs). Due to this reinterpretation (by the hearer), items and constructions can change in meaning. Again, the appeal of the analysis lies in the fact that it rests on pragmatic processes that can be witnessed all over the place in contemporary communication. Hence, the GIIN theory of language change adheres to the uniformitarian principle. In the present paper, I want to draw attention to yet another pragmatic factor that can lead to utterance-comprehension mismatches of the type in (1), namely the presuppositions of utterance u. A sentence u presupposes further information f if u only makes sense at all if f is known. Definite noun phrases like ‘the king of France’ are typical textbook examples. Most sentences that contain the NP ‘the king of France’ will only make sense – whether they be true or false – if there is such a person in the first place. If a speaker utters a sentence with presupposed information, s/he relies on shared knowledge between speaker and hearer. How can presuppositions give rise to language change? Sometimes, a speaker will utter a sentence u, which presupposes information f that the hearer actually did not know before. In this case, the hearer will frequently just tacitly adopt f as another piece of new information that the speaker seems to believe (or else, the speaker would not have uttered u). If the hearer feels that f is totally unwarranted, s/he can object (‘hey, listen, there is no king of France’). In the present paper, I will investigate a further kind of semantic accident that presuppositions can cause, one that, to my knowledge, has not received attention in either semantics/pragmatics or historical linguistics. We find linguistic exchange where an utterance u presupposes information f that is ‘‘hard to believe’’ not in the sense that it would be a proposition with clear but dubitable content. Sometimes, presuppositions are ‘‘hard to believe’’ in that it is unclear what the presupposed facts that would license an utterance could look like at all. Hearers (or readers) of such utterances will diagnose that (i) either the speaker believes facts about the world that are unclear and dubious or that (ii) the speaker might have used words or phrases in a sense that were formerly unknown to the hearer. If the hearer pursues hypothesis (ii), s/he may come to interpret the utterance in some innovative way uu that defines a new language (micro) stage Lnew even though the speaker firmly believed that he/she was making an utterance u in the conservative Lold. From the speaker’s perspective, all the hearer would have had 22 Regine Eckardt
- 37. to do is adopt-and-believe some presuppositions (we will use the official term accommodation later). From the hearer’s perspective, it was harder to accommodate the presupposed information than to believe that the utterance was really something new. The utterance created too much pragmatic overload. This is the abstract backbone of the proposal. I will discuss four example cases where I believe that this proposal is better in line with the attested uses at certain phases of semantic change than either one of the accounts that I listed at the beginning. I can not exclude that the real change came about in ways different from those that I will devise here. However, the present proposal is an attempt to make sense of data in phases of change, which are hard to reconcile with other analyses of change, notably those listed at the beginning. In the next sections, I will introduce the examples and will list the open questions that are posed. I will then offer a more detailed introduction of presuppositions and presupposition accommodation, the core concepts of my proposal. We will then see how change arises from pragmatic overload in each of the examples at stake. 2. IMPLICATURES ARE NOT ENOUGH In this paper, I will be concerned with the following four items. All of them passed at least once from one meaning to a subsequent new meaning, as listed here. German fast (1) ‘immovably, tight’W(2) ‘very much’W(3) ‘almost’ English even (1) ‘flat, smooth’W(2) ‘exactly’W(3) scalar particle German selbst (1) intensifying – selfW(2) ‘even’ Italian perfino (1) ‘through to the end’W(2) ‘even’ When looking at these semantic stages, one can not but wonder what kind of absent- mindedness or creative impulse would drive a speaker – any speaker – to initiate the respective innovation. Scalar particles notoriously have incensed researchers’ interest (for a survey, see, e.g., Traugott, 2006). Consider fast2 to fast3 in German. Who would use a word meaning ‘very much’ to express the concept of approximation? Take even: Who would use a word that means ‘exactly’ to express the concept of scalar extremity? In the examples below, I try to give a feeling for the distance between old meaning – new meaning. If we were to witness a change scenario, speaker of Lold would have utter the (a) sentence and the hearer would have to understand something like the (b) sentence. (2) a. speaker: ‘‘Tom is very drunk’’ b. hearer understands: ‘Tom is almost drunk’ (3) a. speaker: ‘‘Sally went exactly to the police’’ b. hearer understands: ‘Sally went even to the police’ Avoid pragmatic overload 23
- 38. It is virtually impossible to conceive of any context/content of utterance where the (a) utterances would give rise to implicatures like those in (b). This is particularly clear for the case of fastGerman. It has been argued that almost S entails not S (Sadock, 1981) while very S certainly does entail S. The relevant entailments are summarized in (4). (4) Tom is very drunk-Tom is drunk. Tom is almost drunk-Tom is not drunk. If (2.b) were an implicature of (2.a), we’d face a case of an utterance with a logically contradicting implicature. This only happens when a speaker flouts the maxim of quality and makes an ironic statement. It would be possible, of course, to use very/fastGerman in an ironic statement. Yet, then we’d normally understand that ‘‘very much P’’, ironically, conveys that ‘‘not P at all’’. For the other three instances of change, it is likewise hard to tell a story how implicatures should give rise to the newer sense. Yet, speculations are of limited value and instead of debating the possibility or impossibility of certain types of implicatures, we should take a look at usages of the items in question that have been found indicative for imminent or ongoing change by earlier authors. Traugott (2001, 2006) offers a detailed discussion of data in the phase of emergence of even in the scalar sense. Among other examples, she offers (5) as an interesting quote around the turning point from ‘exactly’ to scalar particle. (5) when I remembre your ffavour and your sadde loffynge delynge to me wardes, ffor south ye make me evene veray glade and joyus in my hart; [ . . . ] ‘when I remember your beauty and sober loving behaviour toward me, truly you make me oevenW very glad and joyous in my heart . . . ’ (1476 Private Letters of John Shillingford, II, 7 after Traugott, 2001: 10) We will certainly agree with Traugott’s diagnosis that (5) does not show a straightforward use of even in the then predominant sense ‘exactly, just’. However, it is not a use of the type that one would expect in the light of the GIIN theory either. Specifically, this is not a passage where the speaker literally utters ‘‘you make me exactly happy’’ and thereby implicates ‘‘you make me very happy’’. As the first proposition does not implicate the second even in particular, it can’t be a generalized invited implicature, either. Pre-theoretically speaking, (5) simply looks like a mistaken choice of words by the writer, a Thomas Betson to his cousin Katherine Ryche (Traugott, 2001: 10). Traugott glosses the use as ‘‘emphatic’’ which is a plausible prose characterization of the passage, but not part of an analysis of the development in terms of GIINs. Similar ‘‘mistaken’’ uses can be found for the other three items in (1) at the turn between older and newly emerging additional sense. Given that they don’t seem to exemplify implicature, nor irony, nor any other known rhetorical pattern, one might want to know what was going on there. I will elaborate the hypothesis that such examples show instances of pragmatic overload and are 24 Regine Eckardt
- 39. reinterpreted by the reader in order to Avoid Pragmatic Overload (APO). In the next section, I will introduce the notion of presuppositions in some more detail before we turn to an illustration of the APO reanalysis on basis of our four sample items. 3. PRESUPPOSITION IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS The presuppositions of a sentence S are those pieces of information that the speaker needs to believe in order to make sense of S: S presupposes f if S can only be reasonably be uttered if f is assumed to hold true. Notably, presuppositions need to hold independently of whether the content of S is asserted, denied, questioned, modalized, etc. (see Geurts, 1999 for a very clear survey of presupposition tests). A presupposition f of S is not entailed by S; negating S, or asking whether S, also requires that the speaker believes that f. The following sentences illustrate the phenomenon. (6) My grandmother stopped smoking pot. (7) My grandmother did not stop smoking pot. (8) Has your grandmother stopped smoking pot? Each of (6)–(8) presuppose f ¼ ‘My grandmother used to smoke pot.’ Ideally, in actual communication, speaker and hearer share information that is presupposed by the speaker’s utterance. For the speaker, the requirement is tantamount to not making senseless contributions. A rational speaker will only assert S if s/he believes that the presuppositions of S hold true. An utterance like the following is incoherent. (9) x My grandmother stopped smoking pot and I don’t believe that she ever smoked pot. For the hearer, matters may be somewhat different. In many cases, the hearer will not have been aware of all pieces of information that are presupposed by the speaker’s utterance. Having spotted the presuppositions, however, the hearer will usually assume that the speaker has made a meaningful contribution and adopt the presuppositions as part of shared common knowledge. In technical terms, the hearer will accommodate the presuppositions of the speaker’s utterance. (10) A: Did Granny finally stop smoking pot? B accommodates: ‘A’s grandmother must have been smoking pot.’ Stalnaker (2002) offers an explicit modeling of presupposition accommodation in terms of common ground update. Presupposition accommodation is exploited rhetorically, for instance when the speaker wants to convey information without plainly asserting it. When a teacher tells her student ‘‘I regret to inform you that you have failed the exam’’, she actually asserts ‘I regret S’ and presupposes ‘S holds true’. The student will have to accommodate S: ‘I failed the exam’ in Avoid pragmatic overload 25
- 40. order to make sense of the teacher’s assertion ‘I regret S’. Hence, the teacher will effectively, but not rhetorically, have informed the student about the failing. Yet, such rhetorical tricks will not play a role in our examples. Sometimes it may be hard to guess and accommodate the correct presuppositions that the speaker has in mind. In such cases, the hearer can ask back. In (11), the particle also gives rise to the presupposition that Tommy knows more persons who wear wonder bras. If Sue does not know who that may be (Tommy himself being an unlikely option), she can ask back. (11) Tommy: Do you also wear ‘wonder bra’? Sue: Yes, why – who else does? Finally, the presuppositions of the speaker’s utterance may be problematic in that they are in conflict with general knowledge. Assume that someone utters (12) (with the indicated accent, and the additive particle associating with you). (12) Are you ALSO a mother of Peter Smith? In (12), also gives rise to the presupposition f ¼ ‘the speaker knows more mothers of Peter Smith’. Most likely, the hearer would challenge the presupposition (‘‘Peter Smith has several mothers?’’) and reject it. Sometimes, as we will see, such unreasonable presuppositions are less easy to express than in the case at hand. In such cases, hearers are less likely to start debating and instead may just try to make sense of the utterance one way or other. Even in (12), the hearer could decide to adopt an interpretation of the sentence that allows for the accommodation of the presupposition. Specifically, the word mother could be interpreted in a way that allows for people to have several mothers (‘‘interpret mother as one of the women who pamper Peter Smith’’). However, the more far- fetched such interpretations get, the more semantic charity is necessary in order to do justice to the presuppositions. This is what I call ‘‘the utterance carries a pragmatic overload’’. 4. IMPLAUSIBLE PRESUPPOSITIONS We will now turn to our list of four items even, fast, perfino, and selbst. It turns out that the items in their older senses likewise give rise to presuppositions, but to more subtle ones than the examples in Section 3. We will take a closer look at each case in turn. At the time antedating the emergence of the contemporary senses of these words, we find uses of the word in sentences where presuppositions can not be accommodated because they contradict common world knowledge. Let us say that little pragmatic ‘‘accidents’’ happened from time to time. Not all of these accidents necessarily need to lead straight to the newly emerging sense of the word. However, many of these pragmatic ‘‘accidents’’ could best be repaired by the hearer if he or she hypothesized that the problematic item was in fact used in a new sense. In such cases, the modern 26 Regine Eckardt
- 41. reader will be able to interpret the sentence on the basis of the modern use of the word, and the only remaining surprise would be how the contemporary reader/hearer would have been able to do the same, given that he did not know as yet where language history would lead. The present section illustrates pragmatic accidents for fast (German), even, perfino, and selbst. In each case, I will briefly specify the older reading of the word, spell out the presuppositions of that older reading, and then show examples from the crucial time of change where these presuppositions were hard or impossible to accommodate. 4.1. fast (German) German and English fast go back to a common adverbial root which meant ‘‘tightly, fast’’ in the sense of both physical attachment as well as mental attachment to a cause. It is used in this sense in the examples in (13) and (14) (all quotes from Deutsches Wörterbuch, Grimm and Grimm (1854–1960)). (13) sölh pflicht halt fast ‘this duty hold fast’ (1535 Schwarzenberg 139, 2, from DW 3:1348) (14) halt fast den pfluog ‘hold the plough fast/tightly’ (1535 Schwarzenberg 140, 2, from DW 3: 1348) Subsequently, the notion of taking a ‘good grip’ was extended to gradable properties in general. The word became a degree modifier with the meaning of very much. Here, German and English part ways, the English adverb adopting the notion of moving on with ‘high speed’, as laid out in the classical study by Stern (1931). The German degree use is illustrated in (15) and (16). (15) dis ler und trost mich fast erquickt ‘this lesson and consolation revives me very much’ (1535 Schwarzenberg 152, 2, from DW 3: 1348) (16) wenn du gleich fast darnach ringest, so erlangestu es doch nicht. ‘even if you struggle for it hard, you will not attain it’ (1534 Luther, Sir. 11, 2, from DW 3: 1350) The use of an adverb which reports that a property P held to a high degree carries the presupposition that P is a gradable property in the first place. Otherwise, the combination fast P will not make any sense. The DW offers quotations like the following, around the time when the approximative use emerged. The authors of the dictionary clear-sightedly comment that here, the sense of fast was Avoid pragmatic overload 27
- 42. ‘‘leaning towards the newer sense ‘almost’’’. Taking a closer look at the respective examples in order to understand why this may be so, we note that they typically fail to combine fast with a gradable property. (17) weil er fast hundert ierig war ‘he was very much?/almost? hundred years old’ (1534 Luther, Röm. 4, 19, from DW 3; 1350) (18) kamen darauff fast um zwo uren ‘(they) arrived there very much?/almost? at two o’clock/sharp?’ (c. 1576 Fischart gl. schif 185, from DW 3: 1350) (19) Nun war gedachtes VerzeichniX so accurat eingerichtet, daX fast nicht ein Balcken vergessen war, ‘that very much?/almost? not ONE log forgotten was’ wo er solte eingeschoben, wie er solte bekleidet oder gemahlet, wie er solte behobelt und beschnitzet werden. (1672, Weise erzn. eingang, from DW 3: 1350) We will discuss this impression of ‘‘leaning towards a newer sense’’ on the basis of an utterance like (17), rendered in the English equivalent in (17u). (17u) He was very muchdeg 100 years old. Be 100 years old is not usually something that one can be with more or less intensity. Either the speaker was unaware of the problem and erroneously chose fast instead of the qualifier that expresses what he actually had had in mind. Or the speaker indeed conceptualized the property be 100 years old as gradable; perhaps thinking of degrees of senility, or wisdom, or poise. The reader will notice the problem: very much presupposes a gradable property, but be 100 years old isn’t one. The required mental search for a way in which be 100 years old could possibly be conceived of as gradable is what makes (17) hard to process: it creates the pragmatic overload for the utterance in (17). For completeness’ sake, note that (17) can not give rise to any implicatures or other inference (general or particular) unless the reader finds some way to map the utterance onto some literal content in the first place, because meaningless utterances don’t give rise to implicatures. If this first derivation of literal content should already carry the reader to the proposition ‘he was almost 100 years old’ then the change from very much to almost does not arise by implicature. In principle, of course, it could be claimed that the reader computed some other proposition q as the literal content of (17) and that this other proposition q, in that context, implicated the newer sense ‘he was almost 100’. But then, I can’t see what q could possibly be. 28 Regine Eckardt
- 43. 4.2. even In its earliest attested stage, once again shared by the German cognate eben, the word even denoted ‘evenly, smoothly’ as a property of surfaces. (20) Do past or cleye ther-upon al aboute as ytold bi-fore, caste Scalding hot honey euene ther-upon ‘Put paste or mud thereon all around as said before cast scalding hot honey evenly thereon’ (c. 1450 Horses, p. 113 [Helsinki], quote/translation after Traugott, 2006: 346) This notion can also be applied in cases where two or more objects put together form an even surface, and hence one fits the other evenly. From such uses, a somewhat later sense developed that can be paraphrased in modern English by: ‘exactly, precisely; in (exactly) equal degree’. As to be expected, the exact match can be one between two objects, or an object and a measure, as illustrated in (21) (the passage describes the measures of Noah’s ark). (21) The heght is euen thyrty Cubettys full strenght. ‘the height is exactly thirty cubits full strength’ (c. 1500 Towneley Plays, p. 21 [Helsinki], quote/translation after Traugott, 2006: 347) The qualification that something was ‘‘exactly, just, precisely P’’ presupposes a topology of approximating P-hood (canonically illustrated by numbers and scales like ‘roughly 20 years old’ – ‘exactly 20 years old’) approximation from more than one direction The topology need not rest on scientific scales or geometrical spaces; human concepts can rest on more general topological spaces (e.g., Gärdenfors, 2000). The examples in (22) rest on a topology of similarities between singing events, and report closer and loser similarities between events where nightingales are singing and where humans are singing. (22) She sang approximately like a nightingale She sang exactly like a nightingale The notion of ‘exactness’ is inapplicable when a property P can not be approximated (#be roughly/exactly pregnant) when a property P is inherently vague itself (# be roughly/exactly angry) when a property P is the polar end of a scale The last restriction may come somewhat surprisingly, but can easily be verified if we consider infelicitous examples like those in (23). The infelicity arises for all adverbials that express Avoid pragmatic overload 29
- 44. ‘‘exactness’’, and can be reproduced in other languages as well. Hence I take it that the restriction is not one that only accidentally applies to one special adverb of contemporary English alone. It appears to be part of the notion of an exact hit, and its opposite, the missing, that the target point can be missed in more than one direction. (23) a. #Tom exactly emptied the glass. b. #The dog exactly died. c. #Anna read the book exactly to the end. This was the state of English even at the time when the scalar particle started to develop. The following quotes, taken from Traugott (2001) alone, show attested uses of even around the time of the emergence of the scalar particle. Each of them fails to satisfy one or the other aspect of the topology that is presupposed by the notion of an exact (‘even’) match. (24) whanne I remembre your ffavour and your sadde loffynge delynge to me wardes, ffor south ye make me evene veray glade and joyus in my hart: and on the tothersyde agayn whanne I remembre your yonge youthe. And seeth well that ye be none eater of your mete, the which shuld helpe you greately in waxynge; ffor south than ye make me very hevy again. ‘When I remember your beauty and sober loving behaviour toward me, truly you make me really very glad and joyous in my heart, and on the other hand again, when I remember your young age, and see clearly that you are no eater of your food, which should help you greatly in your growing, truly then you make me very sad again.’ (1476 Private Letters of John Shillingford, II, 7, in Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers; translation after Traugott, 2001: 10) What we see here is the combination of evene and veray glade (‘truly happy’). The latter denotes a gradable property that has vague boundaries. There are no clear criteria from where on a person should count as veray glade in contrast to ‘‘simply’’ glade. Against this background, evene is supposed to contribute some qualification of J.S.’s happiness. The reader will face a conceptual mismatch between the modifier evene and its argument veray glade, which violates the topological properties presupposed by evene. The passage is pragmatically problematic if we assume that the author attempted to use a word that means ‘precisely’. We could conceptualize the property veray glade as one with clearly circumscribed extension, but it is not clear what should define the exact boundaries of happiness. We therefore face a pragmatic overload. Traugott boldly glosses even as ‘really’, granting J.S. reasonable (though innovative) use of (Early Modern) English and thus nicely illustrates the move of the charitable hearer. The passage is classed as ‘‘must be emphatic’’, and indeed, emotional undertones seem to carry away the writer. It is unclear, however, whether 30 Regine Eckardt
- 45. we don’t just witness a use of the older item even ‘exactly’ with poorly justified presuppositions.1 The following quote of Traugott may show another poorly justified use of ‘exactly’. (25) is not this he that sate and begged? Some sayde: this is he. Other sayd: he is lyke him. But he him selfe sayde: I am even he. ‘Is not this the man that sat and begged? Some said: This is he. Others said: He is like him. But he himself said, I am exactly (?) he.’ (1534, Tyndale, New Testament, IX, i. quoted and translated after Traugott, 2006: 349) The protagonists are concerned with the similarity of one person to another. Taking into consideration what the dialogue is actually about, the notion of exactness seems once again poorly in place. To be or not to be identical to someone is, after all, a categorical property and not one that can be approximated: ?Saulus is roughly/exactly identical to Paulus. What might have interfered is the property of looking similar/exactly like someone. Of course, we can think of visual similarity to ever higher degrees. But that is not what is at stake, the interlocutors do not care whether the speaker is a twin of the man that sate and begged. The passage in (26) shows another use of even where the presuppositions of the word in its older sense are violated. (26) but sayde, he had rather be sycke even vnto death then he wold breake his espousals. ‘But said he would rather be sick precisely?/even?/ø unto death than break his vows.’ (1449 Latimer, Sermons: 36 after Traugott, 2001: 11) Once more, the use of even fails to adhere to the presuppositions of approximation. While ‘dying’ can be approximated by sicknesses of different degrees of severity, it is conceptually impossible to ‘‘miss’’ dead and die ‘‘roughly’’ in contrast to ‘‘exactly’’. The reader at the time faced the task to accommodate an impossible presupposition, which reads roughly like: ‘‘death is not the polar end of the scale of sicknesses of increasing severity’’ (‘exactness’ presupposing that the exact hit can be missed in several directions). This quotation will quite naturally lend itself to a reanalysis in the scalar sense that is expressed by modern even. Note that the range of attested uses of even illustrates that not all the pragmatic ‘‘accidents’’ need to receive a rescue interpretation that leads toward the modern sense of the word. In retrospect, all we can say is that those rescue interpretations, which led to the hypothesis that even denoted the scalar particle determined the future use of the word. Of course, it can not be proved that the specific passage in (26) (or any other, at that) is the driving pragmatic accident. However, it can plausibly be assumed that the crucial passages looked somewhat like (26). 1 It is certainly right to assume, as Traugott does, that J.S. may have intended to say ‘‘really very happy‘‘, but the words chosen may not have expressed this thought even at the time. Avoid pragmatic overload 31
- 46. Let me finally point out, again, that neither (24) nor (25) support the assumption that even in the scalar sense emerged by generalized implicatures (GIIN analysis). In neither (24) nor (25) is even used in its literal old sense plus giving rise to an implicature that exactly P was most surprisingly P. The word even is not used reasonably in its old sense at all, and hence can not give rise to implicatures. The reader’s hermeneutic activity is initiated by the very observation that the older use of even can not be the one at stake in either example. 4.3. perfino In its modern sense, perfino translates to English even and can be used in sentences like the one in (27). (27) È venuto perfino Matteo ‘Even Matteo came’ (Visconti, 2005: 238) In its traditional sense in Old Italian, perfino literally meant ‘through until, to the end’. A typical example, offered in Visconti (2005), is shown in (28). (28) b. Dentro in un bosco, che’è quivi vicino,/t’ imbosca es sta perfino al mattutino. ‘In a wood, which is near here, hide yourself in the wood and stay until morning’ (–1380 La Spagna after Visconti, 2005: 243) A word that reports that P ‘‘holds through until the end’’ presupposes a topology, which defines betweenness and the ancillary notion of an uninterrupted state between two points. The topology can be one in space, but also one on more abstract domains. The reached point can be neutral (like in (28)) but also conceptualized as a polar endpoint on a scale. (29) In ciò ancora che perseverò in croce perfino alla morte, ci dà ammaestramento di perfetta obbedienza e pazienza, e di perseverare nella penitenza ‘In that too, that he endured the cross until death, he provides us with an example of perfect obedience and patience.’ (1432 Cavalca, Esp. simbolo after Visconti, 2005: 243) The following quote around the time of emergence of the scalar use ‘even’ is taken from Visconti (2005). It fails to warrant the presuppositions of perfino in its older sense. (30) [ . . . ] in acqua, in neve, in grandine o pruina: a tutto il ciel s’inclina, perfino a quel che la natura sprezza’ ‘Water, snow, hail or frost: To everything bends the sky, even to that which nature despises’ (1389–1420 S. Serdini, Rime after Visconti, 2005: 244) 32 Regine Eckardt
- 47. The use of perfino in (30) presupposes the existence of a continuum, which passes from water, snow, hail, and frost to ‘‘that which nature despises’’. Or, is frost the thing that nature despises? And, is there a continuum from good to ever more evil things, or isn’t it more a categorical distinction between ‘‘the good’’ and ‘‘the bad’’? Such questions are indicative for an utterance with a presupposition, which may or may not be plausible. In some sense, the speaker in (30) is free to believe in continuous scales of whatever kind (mathematically, there is practically nothing that could stop you from ordering any set whatsoever). But if the scale is too ad hoc, or too private, the hearer will have a hard time in understanding how the speaker believes the presuppositions of (30) satisfied. S/he has hence the choice between guessing and accommodating the speaker’s scale ( ¼ what the speaker believes hearer will do) and accepting a presupposition failure due to lack of a suitable scale. If the hearer decides for the latter option, s/he will next hypothesize that the speaker actually used perfino in a different sense, and interpret the utterance (30) in a new way – possibly and plausibly assuming that perfino was meant to mean ‘even’. 4.4. selbst Like its English cognate, selbst is attested at an early stage as an intensifier in German. It can still be used in this sense, in the form selbst and its variant selber, which unambiguously denotes the intensifier. (31) shows an example. (31) Gott selber ruht sich manchmal aus. ‘God himself takes a rest sometimes.’ The intensifier associates with a certain nominal element in the sentence. (31) shows an adnominal use where the intensifier follows the associated element directly. As argued in Baker 1995, Kemmer 1995, the use of selber/selbst presupposes that the associated object (here: ‘God’) is conceptualized as the center of a salient entourage (here: ‘God’ as the center of His creation). Generally, the use of intensifying selber only makes sense if the associated referent, the x of x-self so to speak, is understood to come with an entourage, peripheral objects or persons, in which x constitutes a central point. I will refer to this presupposition as the entourage presupposition; we will leave the details on focusing and accent placement aside for the ease of exposition. (32) shows a quotation from 1650, around the time when the scalar use emerged. We can assume that the newer sense selbst ¼ even was not in use at the time when this passage was written. I offer the full context, but the crucial part is the underlined sentence at the end. (32) Man kan/es ist nicht ohn/ein blut begierig Thier Gewöhnen daX es spiel vnd nieder knie vor dir/ Man kan/waX noch viel mehr/die starcke flut vmbkehren. Den strömen widerstehn/den tollen wellen wehren. Avoid pragmatic overload 33
- 48. Man dämpfft der flammen macht/man segelt gegen wind/ Man stürtz’t die felsen hin wo thäl vnd hölen 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 flood/resist the streams, restrain the wild waves/One damps the mighty flames, one sails against the winds/One throws boulders where there are valleys and caverns.’ Man kan die steine selbst mit weitzenüberziehen. ‘One can the stones ‘selbst’ with wheat cover’ ‘One can cover the stones ‘selbst’ (themselves/even?) with wheat.’ (1650 Leo Arm., II, 5) In a traditional interpretation of the passage on basis of the intensifier, the reader ends with the following ingredients for the eventual meaning of the underlined sentence: (33) selbst ¼ intensifier, is supposed to associate with Steine ‘stones’ to yield ‘stones themselves’ presupposition: ‘stones’ are something that has an entourage, that is the natural center of some ontological domain. Once again, this presupposition is not logically contradictory but still hard to satisfy or fill with content. What could be the entourage of stones? Mentioned in the text are blutbegierig Thier ‘bloodthirsty animal’, starcke flut ‘flood’, tolle wellen ‘wild waves’, flammen ‘flames’ – but ‘stones’ are not a plausible center in this entourage of things either today or in 1650. To check this, consider the following statement: (34) Bloodthirsty animals, high flood, wild waves, flames: yet, stones are the worst of them all. This assertion is as implausible today as it must have been implausible in 1650. Once again, the reader will face a pragmatic overload when s/he tries to work out an appropriate way to accommodate the presuppositions of (32) under the old reading of selbst. Once again, this may be reason for the reader to wonder whether the speaker intended to use selbst in a new sense, one that would not give rise to unaccommodatable presuppositions. We have now seen several instances utterances with pragmatic overload, caused by items that soon after adopted a new meaning. In the next section, I will discuss in more detail why the repair strategies for the quoted examples could indeed lead the reader/hearer to assume that the word was used in a new sense, and that it was plausibly the sense that we find in permanent use some decades later. Before moving on, let me mention that another nice instance of presupposition failures in the pre-change phase can be traced in the development of lauter, see Eckardt (2006: Chapter 7). What is most striking about such observations, however, is that pragmatic accidents of this kind clearly are not restricted to language use in ancient times. Instances of pragmatic overload can be observed on a daily basis as soon as you start watching the utterances in your daily 34 Regine Eckardt
- 49. Other documents randomly have different content
- 50. Mütterchen Heimat! wie die Russen sagen, die so weich das Herz streichelnde Worte haben, als hätten Kinder sie erfunden; Mütterchen Heimat! Wie schön war der Tag, als ich zum letztenmal hinaufstieg auf den Berg, der mir als Kind ebenso unerreichbar schien wie der Chimborasso: erst durch feuchte, reifgraue Wiesen, an Kohlgärten und Kartoffelfeldern vorbei, wo Feuer knisterten und der weiße Rauch rein und bitter in die Luft schwelte. Vor mir die Höhen, braunviolett, schon entlaubt, nur hie und da, am Waldrand, eine Buche, aufflammend wie der Engel mit feurigem Schwert. Die Birnbäume in den Wiesen – o ihr guten Holzbirnchen, die ihr den Mund zusammenzieht und doch süß seid unter eurer Herbigkeit – ließen ihre roten Blätter fallen, die schmalen Wasserrinnen im Grase trugen sie fort mit leisem Gluckgluck; Karren, mit Rüben beladen, kamen des Wegs, die kleinen kurzbeinigen Kühe dampften in der Herbstluft, rötlich und weiß, mit nassen rosa Schnuten und faltigen Wampen, blondbewimpert wie Rubenssche Göttinnen. Dann tat sich der Wald auf und sein Wohlgeruch war wie ein Rausch. An der Erde, an den Abhängen, auf allen Pfaden lag das Laub, fußhoch; Leute harkten es herunter von den Hängen, soweit man durch die Stämme sah; zu hohen Haufen türmten sie's, der Duft von Pilzen und Erde und Gärung wurde immer stärker. Das wären Raschelnester gewesen für kleine Waldgötter mit Zottelbeinchen, sich darin einzuwühlen, bis nur die spitzen, bepelzten Ohren heraussahen; aber nun sollten die kleinen blonden Kühe darauf liegen, im Winter, in den warmen, dunstigen Ställen, wenn der Laternenschein über den Schnee huscht und der Rauch vom Dache aufsteigt, zum Zeichen, daß dort Menschen wohnen. Der kleine Pfad war ganz schlüpfrig von den Blättern, immer höher zickzackte er; hier war nur junger Buchenbestand, glatte Stämme in grauer Atlashaut, ihnen zu Füßen der rostrote Teppich – und ein Sonnenstrahl ging vor mir her. Ganz droben begann wieder der Tannen Reich, ihre Wurzeln deckte Moos und Sauerklee, und Brombeeren wucherten da, die im Schatten grün geblieben; noch ein paar Schritte, und vor mir stand der plumpe, runde Turm. 1837 war
- 51. über seiner Tür eingemeißelt, und ich sah sie hier wandeln, Mamas mit Krinolinen und komischen Sonnenschirmchen, wie man sie auf Porzellanvasen vor Königsschlössern wandeln sieht, und Papas in schachbrettartigen Beinkleidern, mit erstickenden Halsbinden und grauen Zylinderhüten; und die artigen Kinder erst! Wie die Bilder in »les petites filles modèles«, mit Pamelahüten und gestickten Höschen, mit Reifen und roten Luftballons! Der Turmwart kam und erzählte, daß sein Großvater der erste Turmwart gewesen. Er wohnte noch in demselben strohgedeckten kleinfenstrigen Häuschen, und seine dicke Frau kam und rief zu Kaffee und Zwetschgenkuchen. In der Küche war aufgetischt, und dort lief eine alte, zutrauliche Hasenmutter herum, deren dunkles Fell wie von Rauhreif übersilbert war, das schnuppernde Näschen und die glatten Hängeohren aber kohlschwarzer Spiegelsamt. Sie war's gewöhnt, auf den Schoß genommen zu werden, man reichte sie herum wie eine Wärmflasche, und dann trank sie Milchkaffee aus der Untertasse, wie ein Christenmensch! Dann ging der Turmwart auf den Turm, und ich sah ihn in der düstern Wendeltreppe verschwinden, wo an den Balken die Fledermäuse schon im Winterschlaf hingen, zusammengerollt wie alte schwarze Glacéhandschuhe. Alte Städtchen, an Bergen gelegen, haben in ihren Ausläufern halbländliche Wege und Gassen, die die Kirche, den Markt und die Schule mit den bäuerlichen Anwesen, den Wiesen und Äckern verbinden. Durch solche Wege kam ich herunter, im Nebel, an Werkstätten und Holzplätzen und fließenden Brünnchen vorüber, die in diesem quellenreichen Land durch eiserne Schlangenköpfchen in verwitterte Tröge rauschen, eiskalt mit einem Moosgeschmack vom Walde her. »Hähnchen und Hühnchen wollten zusammen auf den Nußberg« – so geht das Märchen an, das unvergeßliche; und durch solche Wege und Gäßchen sind Hähnchen und Hühnchen gewiß auch gekommen. Die Laternen schimmerten dunstig, Gaslaternen, die ein buckliges Männchen anzündete. Kleine, altväterische Häuser standen hinter Holzstaketen; in den niederen Stuben, hinter Geranien und Fuchsien kam Licht durch die Scheiben; nun saßen drin die Menschen beim Kartoffelsalat und tranken gelben Landwein
- 52. aus dicken, grünlichen Gläsern dazu. Auch unsere Waschfrau wohnte da; in ihrer geblümten Kattunjacke, die Brille auf der Nase, wie eine kleine, aufmerksame Eule, stand sie und bügelte bei der himmelblauen Lampe. Ihr Kätzchen kam aus dem Gebüsch und lief eine Weile vor mir her mit kleinen, lockenden Turteltaubentönen. Alles war so heimlich, so lockend, die goldenen Ritzen in den Läden, der Schein, der über die Schwellen glitt, Laternen an Gartentoren, wo hohe Bäume Unverständliches rauschten, und die Stimme des Kätzchens, das sich im Dunkeln an mir rieb, sobald ich stille stand; alles, als müßt es mir etwas sagen. Weiter unten, wo die reichen Leute wohnen, wird gebaut und eingerissen; wo einst Wiesen waren mit großen Margueriten und Zittergras und alle Gräben voll himmlischen Vergißmeinnichts, da steht jetzt Haus an Haus, die Häuser groß und die Gärten klein ... früher war's umgekehrt. Und so vieles fand ich nicht mehr. Feine, einstöckige Häuser mit geschweiften, silbernen Schieferdächern, nach der Straße waren Mauern, von Efeu überhangen, aber dahinter wußte man – da war ein alter Garten, voll Platanen und rauschender Silberpappeln und Azaleengebüsch, die Wege ganz vermoost, und braune Schnecken krochen drüber hin – la limace – le limaçon lernte ich, die eine hat ein Schneckenhaus und die andere nicht – ja, wo ist das alles hin? Muttergotteshäuschen mit Bänken, damit die armen Frauen ihre Körbe absetzen und ein wenig verschnaufen konnten ... Da war auch sonst ein kleiner, schattiger Friedhof; nicht der berühmte alte am Berghang, nein, ein ganz kleiner, noch älterer, abseits, im Tal; im Frühling voll Jasminduft und Finkengesang, im Herbst rostbraun vom Blätterfall und von zutraulichen Amseln bevölkert, der gab Kunde von denen, die von hier nicht mehr heimgekehrt sind. Hier lagen sie aus aller Herren Ländern, sogar unter russischen Kreuzen mit ihren Schrägbalken und unverständlichen Inschriften; aber manchmal waren sie ins Französische übersetzt und kündeten, daß da ein Chevalier de l'Ordre de Saint André von seinem hoffentlich verdienstvollen Leben ausruhte, oder ein armer junger Dmitri, eine sanfte Hélène, ravie à ses parents inconsolables à l'âge de dixneuf ans, sich hier zu Tode
- 53. gehustet hatten. Denn Davos und Arosa waren damals noch nicht erfunden, und aus weiter Ferne kamen sie angereist, denen der Tod seine Rosen auf die Wangen geküßt hatte, und mußten dableiben, weil ihre Kraft sie verließ. »Sacred to the memory of Anne, the dearly beloved wife ... aged twentytwo ...« Eine schöne, breitschulterige Muttergottes, die einen rechten Königsmantel von Efeu trug, hütete den Eingang und sagte: Fürchtet Euch nicht. Kinder spielten zwischen den Gräbern, alte Großmütter saßen dort und strickten ... Ja, das ist nun verschwunden und vieles ist neu und fremd geworden, und es ist wie mit geliebten Menschen, die sich verändert haben; man liebt sie noch – ach Gott, Liebe hat ja wohl auch neun Leben wie die Katzen – aber man wird ihrer nicht mehr froh. Aber droben am Waldrand ist noch vieles geblieben wie es war; es riecht wie damals nach Erde und Moos und schwelendem Kartoffelkraut, und der Umriß der Hügel ist derselbe, über denen die Sterne stehen, so altbekannt – die ewig geheimnisvolle, goldene Schrift ... Die Augen füllen sich mit Tränen, seid ihr's, bist du's? Und man wittert in die Luft wie ein Jagdhund, der den Dunst seines Herrn erkennt. Die Karren kehren heim aus dem Wald, mit Laubstreu hochbeladen, all das Laub, das im Frühling seine spitzen, seidigen Knospen aufgetan, mit dem Wind gestichelt hatte, dankbar der Sonne, dem Leben. Nun ist es vermodert und wird die Erde düngen, wird geben, nachdem es genommen. Mütterchen Heimat, sanft gehst du um mit deinen Kindern. Hier ist Laubstreu für deine Erde!
- 54. Hinweise zur Transkription Das Inhaltsverzeichnis wurde vom Buchende an den Buchanfang verschoben. Das Originalbuch ist in Frakturschrift gedruckt. Der Text des Originalbuches wurde grundsätzlich beibehalten, einschließlich uneinheitlicher Schreibweisen (z. B. Gerda – Gerta), mit folgenden Ausnahmen, Seite 33: ; eingefügt (seit sie ihm gesagt, Emmo käme her;) Seite 36: , eingefügt (die Welt gewiß nicht gewinnen, aber um ihre Seele sorgte) Seite 58: deratige geändert in derartige (er liebte derartige Beschäftigungen über die Maßen) Seite 59: Intensivkul ur geändert in Intensivkultur (immer nur zu zweien, so 'ne Intensivkultur) Seite 94: «, geändert in ,«
- 55. (»Der Arme,« sagte sie) Seite 112: «, geändert in ,« (»Nun wollen wir uns einwintern,« sagte Tante.) Seite 114: «, geändert in ,« (,« sagte Madame Benoît mit Grabesstimme) Seite 130: in geändert in ein (das eigentlich Unkorrekte durch ein gewisses Dekorum) Seite 136: Absatz eingefügt vor »Wie (»Wie ging das zu?« frug der Prinz) Seite 140: , hinter nein, nein eingefügt (»Ach nein, nein,« sagte sie) Seite 155: . entfernt hinter Mond (heraufstarrten zum Mond wie Seelen) Seite 155: .. geändert in ... (mehr erhellen kann ... dort ging die Frau) Seite 168: dielen geändert in diesen (aus diesen Produkten des ancien régime hoffte er) Seite 178: , eingefügt (die Kinder gehören der Mutter, doch nur so lange)
- 56. Seite 183: gänglich geändert in gänzlich (Sie sind hier gänzlich deplaciert) Seite 197: , hinter dem entfernt (dankbar der Sonne, dem Leben) Seite 197: , eingefügt (und wird die Erde düngen,)
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