Academic Paper |
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| Title: | The grammaticalisation of movement verbs in Digo and English |
| Author: | Steve Nicolle |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Institution: | Africa International University |
| Linguistic Field: | Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics |
| Subject Language: |
Digo
English |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the grammaticalization of movement verbs (go, come) into directional markers in Digo and English. In particular, the paper discusses the use of movement verbs to express subjectification and social deixis, and the development of grammaticalized expressions which retain movement, direction and position as part of their core meaning. In such cases, grammaticalization does not result in the loss of the semantic component of physical movement encoded by the lexical source. A common, some would say necessary, feature of grammaticalization is the loss of lexical meaning (‘semantic bleaching’), and since grammaticalization involving movement verbs typically results in the loss of physical attributes, it has been assumed that physical movement is a purely lexical category. Against this position, I will demonstrate that in certain expressions in which physical attributes are retained as part of the semantic component of the resulting construction, formal (that is, morphosyntactic) grammaticalization has occurred. Such constructions are often overlooked in studies of grammaticalization because not all languages realise grams of movement alongside other functional categories, and in those languages that do exhibit grammaticalized movement expressions, these can be intermediate stages in grammaticalization chains leading ultimately to purely temporal constructions. |
| Type: | Individual Paper |
| Status: | Completed |
| Publication Info: | Révue de Sémantique et Pragmatique 11: 47-68. |
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