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General Principles of Unidirectionality.
Example of Greek future tha which Meillet says is
In fact (as H&T point out repeatedly) this is not direct: instead, it is
more like "lexical item in certain highly constrained local contexts
is reanalyzed as having morphological or syntactic functions, or
Some people would like to claim that once something starts, its end is
implied or can be expected, and progress is inexorable or inevitable. No
evidence for this; there are strong constraints on how change occurs;
and on directionality. Compare Sapir's notions of drift which
is different, perhaps a more abstract idea about change, or "a metacondition
on the way in which the grammar of a language as a whole will change.
(R. Lakoff 1972).
Generalization
On generalization, note some differences: some say generalization leads to weakening
of semantic content, with phonetic erosion. But H&T don't agree; instead
see
Refer to previous discussion of this (more informativeness, pragmatic
strengthening.) generalization means
Generalization of Meaning
What constraints on kinds of meanings that are subject go grammaticalization?
Lexical fields: there are semantic relations that occur in lexical fields
, e.g.
Usually lexical items that are chosen are general, superordinate and
not specialized, so
go, come might be used, but not "ooze, flutter". (But see
the Tamil aspectual verbs, which start out with some general ones,
but gradually involve more specialized ones.) What are chosen are
basic words of a field, a.k.a. hyponyms Or, a form is
less basic, but is then generalized, and then grammaticalized:
General lexical items then take on more and more generalized functions, as
used in more and more contexts: wider distribution, more polysemies. Former
inferences are grammaticalized.
Difference with lexicalization changes, where some meanings become narrowed,
e.g. cf. German sterben 'die' vs. Eng. starve 'die of
hunger.' Dispreferred items
(taboo items etc.) become narrower and narrower.
Grammaticalization does not give evidence of this narrowing, so this absence
predicts
constraints on possible developments (see examples of negative phrases
and negative incorporation, pg. 98, where extant negative form is
negative of the weaker member; can be strengthened by an implicature cancelable
upward to stronger meaning.)
Another constraint: avoidance of homonymic clash, so if two lexical
items 'fall together' (because of some phonological development) one or another
will be replaced, esp. if meanings are opposite. Most homonymic clash
is lexical not grammatical, so multiple grammatical homonymies
can exist, and without problems:
Cf. English grammatical morpheme -th Can mean:
The two meanings can be homonymic and not clash, because they occur in very
different contexts. Also true of the English -s which functions as:
cats sleep a lot,
while his dog chases cars.
item becomes syntactically fixed,
a "construction" Example:Lit. Tamil inru meel
'today+top'
eventually fuses morphologically
Assumption: A precedes B, not vice versa loss of older, ... more concrete meanings and development
of newer more abstract ones
that [...] cancel out the loss.
No problem with homonomy: John' s
Cf. Also Finnish example of reanlysis (singular agentive N's) then generalized to new environments via:
In lgs. with lots of morphology, N's can be determined to be N's by their morphology and the affixes etc. they can take. Same with V's. In a language without much overt morphology, what is a N or V is known by the function they perform, so when an item in English like prepositional "off" is used as a verb ( Off the pigs! a Black Panther slogan of the 60's and 70's) we know it's a verb from its function and context. Often this is along a cline from major to minor, e.g.
major category (--> adjective/adverb) --> minor category.
H&T give examples of shift from major to minor as more important(?) than my example of shift from minor to major; e.g. development of Eng. while as a conjunction instead of as a N. When used as a conjunction, while cannot:
Compare development of Tamil/Kannada postpositions from verbs, such as paattu from the verb paar meaning 'see.'
| iNNekki | varakkuuDaadu | NNu | sonneen-ee | aanaa | iNNekki | paattu | vandiingaLee! |
| today | come-prohib | unquote | said-1png-emph | but | today | deliberately | came-2png-emph |
| I told you not to come today, but you deliberately came today anyway! | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Or: 'I told you not to come today, but you went and did so, anyway!) | |||||||
Clusters are not rigid, fixed points, but gathering places, like iron filings around magnets.
____________ ___________________ _________________________ _________________ _____________________ _________________________ _________________ Etc.
Remember that once embarked upon, grammaticalization does not have an inevitable result; may be arrested etc. We can't work back from any one form to see a clear path; and we can't illustrate a particular cline with only one form. (Not enough historical record, they say; I would bet we might find examples in Tamil with its long time depth, hs). What is important is the issue of directionality between adjacent forms on the cline not demo. of complete sequence of events for a given form.
Examples:
The Hindi data are paralleled by data from other IA lgs. which don't have the same frequency, declining to zero in some Dardic lgs. (Shina, Kashmiri) which some people say aren't really IA lgs. anyway. Hooks' account shows how vector verbs contribute notions of perfective aspect, emphasis on completion/completedness, full affectedness of the verb's object, and involvement of an agent. Hook
| iNNekki | varakkuuDaadu | NNu | solliTTeen-ee | aanaa | iNNekki | paattu | vandiingaLee! |
| today | come-prohib | unquote | saidCOMPL1PNG+emph | but | today | deliberately | came-2png-emph |
I definitely said NOT to come today, but you came today anyway!
According. to H&T, Hindi can't be said to have any kind of AUX (or vector) category of Verb that is different from Marathi; or perhaps we can't say Hindi vector verbs are a kind of AUX, but Marathi's are not?; there is a scale of grammaticalization here, obviously, and it's messy. Perhaps the Marathi ones aren't as fully grammaticalized as those of Hindi. But all Indian lgs. (as noted) have these to some extent.
_________> A
/
source _____/
\
\__________> B
or conversely, we can also get merger:
A______
\
\_________ new item
/
B_______/
Merger occurs when sources from slightly different domains converge on one grammatical. domain, if there is pragmatic, semantic and synactic appropriateness. Metaphor: convergence in 'semantic space.' Examples given are convergence of REFLEXIVES and MIDDLE VOICE, common cross-linguistically. Also EVIDENTIALS and CONDITIONALS.
Example of Hindi verbs where go vector vb is becoming more common; speculation is that the others will become less. Some verbs are gaining ascendency and becoming more general, and therefore more broadly functional. Specialization doesn't necessarily mean no coexistence, but some things must themselves become specialized, or lose out. May depend on
which semantic types involved
Another good example: modern French specialization of negative particle ne plus nouns, now usu. pas 'pace, step' Other nouns were in used, some have remained and become specialized ( point, personne, que, jamais, plus, etc.) but some have gone out ( mie, gote, amend, areste, beloce, eschalope ). Now point denotes only "emphatic negation contradicting previous assertion" ('No, it's not true, there isn't any at all. ) and pas is now the negative marker period. Remember that the choice of these items and the grammaticalization of them is motivated by discourse constraints, i.e. originally pas would have been restricted to verbs of motion, but now generalized.
Example of English a/an and one . Originally, one form, Old English an [a:n], which normally would have become [o:n] but instead on the one hand we get [w@n] 'one' and on the other, the cliticized forms a/an i.e. unstressed.
The Malay and Indonesian data show how the grammaticalization of numeral classifiers recruit lexical items with particular shapes (at least with inanimate objects) and then use them as classifiers. Because they retain some resemblance (in most cases) to the original lexical item, persistence is illustrated: if the noun being classified is orang "person" you don't get a classifier with it, i.e. you don't get *seorang orang But in the case of *sabatu --> sawatu --> satu you can get satu batu . If the classifier for a term is used, then you don't get s(u)atu which has now taken on the meaning "one", so you can get either satu rumah 'a house' or sebuah rumah 'one-bunch house'. So we now have divergence of the forms satu and batu which is part of the origin of satu (*suwatu <-- subatu) .
phonological divergence is not necessary however: we can get in Dravidian forms like Tamil viTT-iDu 'leave-DEF' "get out of here!" and the same for Kannada: biTT-biDu "ibid." where one form is the lexical item, followed by the aspect marker based on/derived from it.
Most interesting point they make here is the quote from Schwegler (1988) who says that there is a "psychological proclivity" for the development of negative emphasizers, and that they have their point of origin in contexts of contradiction i.e. emotionally loaded contexts. So the French system is a case in point; the English development reuses NEG in various ways, i.e. not , no way (Jose) .
Renewal by a non-cognate item to effect semantic expressiveness underlies most examples of development of innovative periphrasis which Langacker calls the major way to "achieve perceptual optimality in syntax."
After renewal, new form may undergo reduction, e.g. not --> n't . This gets us into recursivity and arguments about "reduction to zero" and renewal etc. H&T say no; how can there be a stage where you can't say something you need to? Rather, the new form says it better or more expressively, or more communicatively, etc.
See examples (p. 124) for different ways in English to express tense and aspect; assume that the most bonded forms are the oldest, the more periphrastic and less reduced forms are newer.
Syntactic examples from Estonian (could also be German, Russian) with two kinds of relative clauses:
Presumably these 2 types have a pragmatic difference; others may reflect older historical layers of (e.g.) Object Verb syntax instead of newer Verb Object syntax.
More counterexamples, from lexicalization? H&T reject. But grammaticalization as a unidirectional process, and lexicalization as non-unidirectional, may intersect.
Another problem: the non-intersection of Output2 and Output1 and the attempts of speakers2 to repair or cover-up their "mistakes" when their output doesn't match. Known as hypercorrection. May be typical of adults rather than children? May obscure or confuse attempts to detect abductive changes (reanalysis).
haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu last modified 1/27/05