Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics

✍ Scribed by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, Jacqueline Visconti

• Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 313
• Series: 1750-368X
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The focus of this volume is on semantic and pragmatic change, its causes and mechanisms. The papers gathered here offer both theoretical proposals of more general scope and in-depth studies of language-specific cases of meaning change in particular notional domains. The analyses include data from English, several Romance languages, German, Scandinavian languages, and Oceanic languages. Detailed case-studies covering central semantic domains, such as concession, evidentiality, intensification, modality, negation, scalarity, subjectivity, and temporality, allow the authors to test and refine current models of semantic change, by focusing, for instance, on the respective roles of speakers and hearers in the process and on the relationship between semantic and syntactic reanalysis. Key theoretical notions, such as presuppositions, paradigms, word order, and discourse status are revisited in a diachronic perspective to provide innovative accounts of causes and motivations for linguistic changes. A prominent theme is the evolution of procedural meanings of various kinds. Thus, several papers feature different types of pragmatic markers as their object of study, while others are concerned with items and constructions expressing modality, evidentiality, negation, and relational meanings. Closely related themes are: the interface between semantics and pragmatics/discourse, with figurative uses of language, rhetorical-argumentational strategies, discourse traditions, information structure, and the importance of dialogic contexts in change playing a salient role in several papers; the relationship between meaning change and processes such as grammaticalization, subjectification and pragmaticalization; and, the thorny issue of the categorization of linguistic items such as discourse markers or modal particles, evidentials or epistemic modals, to which the diachronic data are shown to contribute substantially. The volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in the fields of semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, grammaticalization, and historical linguistics.

✦ Table of Contents

Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics
......Page 4
Copyright page
......Page 5
Editorial Board
......Page 6
Table of Contents......Page 8
List of Contributors......Page 10
1. The Role of Pragmatic Inferencing in Meaning Change
......Page 12
2. Summaries of the Individual Contributions
......Page 21
References......Page 28
1. Change without Mysteries
......Page 32
2. Implicatures are not Enough
......Page 34
3. Presupposition in Historical Linguistics
......Page 36
4. Implausible Presuppositions
......Page 37
5. APO, and the Charitable Hearer
......Page 46
References......Page 50
Historical Sources
......Page 51
1. Discourse Markers and Modal Particles
......Page 54
2. How do Discourse Markers Arise? Spanish Bien
......Page 56
3. French Bien - The Rise of a Modal Particle
......Page 64
References......Page 70
Further References
......Page 72
1. Preliminaries
......Page 74
2. Godt as Affirmative Marker in Modern Danish
......Page 75
3. The Reinterpretation of godt as a Marker of Affirmation
......Page 80
4. Vel, a Middle Danish Predecessor
......Page 86
Acknowledgments......Page 88
References......Page 89
1. Introduction
......Page 92
2. Rhetorical Effects
......Page 93
3. Procatalepsis and Concession
......Page 94
4. Conclusion
......Page 112
References......Page 113
1. Introduction
......Page 118
2. Allora from Old Italian to Present-Day Italian: An Overview
......Page 120
3. The Diachronic Development of allora’s Uses as a DM
......Page 123
4. Contexts of Use, Relevant Parameters, and 'Pragmatic Configuration’......Page 128
5. Conclusion
......Page 129
References......Page 130
1. Paradigms
......Page 134
2. The Birth of a New Paradigm: So-Called Digressive Markers in Spanish
......Page 135
3. Summary
......Page 154
References......Page 155
1. Introduction
......Page 158
2. Types of es que Constructions
......Page 160
3. Previous Diachronic Studies on es que Constructions
......Page 162
4. Empirical Study
......Page 163
5. Conclusions
......Page 173
References......Page 174
1. Introduction
......Page 176
2. Marovo and the New Georgia Languages
......Page 177
3. Subject Markers in Marovo
......Page 179
4. Origin and Development of Subject Markers in Marovo
......Page 182
5. AspectsolMood Marker to Discourse Connective Particle
......Page 188
References......Page 197
1. Introduction
......Page 200
2. The Functional Status of Evidentials and Modal Particles in Present-Day German
......Page 204
3. The Grammaticalization Channels of Evidentials and Modal Particles (in German)
......Page 210
4. Conclusion
......Page 217
References......Page 218
1. Introduction
......Page 222
2. Diachronic Correlations between Evidentiality and Epistemicity
......Page 223
3. Starting with a Diachronic Dilemma
......Page 224
4. From Evidentiality to Non-Factuality: The Case of American Spanish Dizque
......Page 227
5. Avoiding Non-Factuality in Seem-Verbs
......Page 229
6. Old Italian Non-Factual Future
......Page 232
7. Conclusion
......Page 234
References......Page 235
1. Introduction
......Page 238
2. French Negation and Jespersen’s Cycle
......Page 239
3. Hypothesis of the Present Paper
......Page 243
4. The Use of ‘‘Plain’’ versus ‘‘Reinforced’’ Negation in Old and Middle French
......Page 248
References......Page 259
1. Introduction
......Page 264
2. Synchronic Meanings
......Page 265
3. Diachronic Evolution
......Page 270
4. Syntactic Evolution and Semantic Diversity
......Page 277
References......Page 281
1. Introduction
......Page 284
2. Synchronic mere
......Page 285
3. Diachronic mere
......Page 293
4. Conclusion
......Page 299
References......Page 300
1. Introduction
......Page 302
2. A Brief History of gehören
......Page 303
3. Synchronic Corpus-Based Analysis
......Page 304
4. Discussion
......Page 308
5. Conclusion
......Page 310
Acknowledgments......Page 311
References......Page 312