Date: 15-Aug-2006
From: Martin Hilpert <hilpertrice.edu>
Subject: Synchrone Analyse als Fenster zur Diachronie
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-3340.html
AUTHOR: Krämer, SabineTITLE: Synchrone Analyse als Fenster zur DiachronieSUBTITLE: Die Grammatikalisierung von werden + InfinitivSERIES: LINCOM Studien zu Germanistik 23PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbHYEAR: 2005
REVIEWER: Martin Hilpert, Department of Linguistics, Rice University, USA
This book combines synchronic and diachronic perspectives in a study of theGerman construction 'werden' plus infinitive. In present-day German, thisconstruction conveys the meanings of future time reference and epistemicmodality. This ambiguity has been the subject of several synchronic anddiachronic studies, but the author points out that any historicalinvestigation needs to be informed by a satisfactory account of thepresent-day facts. Finding such an account to be absent, the author aims totake a fresh look at the syntax and semantics of 'werden' in present-dayGerman, and to use synchronic analysis as a window on diachrony.
SUMMARY
The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is a shortintroduction. Chapter two presents a synchronic account of 'werden' plusinfinitive. Chapter three surveys previous approaches to its diachronicdevelopment. Chapter four lays out an alternative scenario based on thesynchronic findings. Chapter five gives a summary.
CHAPTER 1
Chapter one presents the subject matter of the analysis, which is theGerman auxiliary verb 'werden' with an infinitive complement. Sentencessuch as 'Peter wird singen' are ambiguous between the temporalinterpretation 'Peter will sing' and the modal interpretation 'Peterprobably sings (right now)'. The aim of the book is to give a synchronicaccount of this ambiguity as a basis for the reconstruction of thehistorical development that the construction has undergone.
CHAPTER 2
The synchronic analysis in chapter two is preceded by an overview ofprevious work on 'werden' plus infinitive. The ambiguity of theconstruction has given rise to different and quite strongly opposedaccounts. The recurring theme in these accounts is the question whether theconstruction instantiates the grammatical domain of future tense, orwhether it is primarily an epistemic modal verb. Krämer argues that both ofthese positions are problematic: if 'werden' is to be classified as a tensemarker, the definition of tense has to be extended considerably in order toaccommodate modal meaning. Conversely, an account viewing 'werden' as amodal verb is at a loss to explain why it in some cases does not conveymodal meaning, and why its syntactic behavior differs in several respectsfrom the German epistemic modals 'müssen' and 'können'. These problems castdoubt on any unified account of 'werden' as either temporal or modal, sothat Krämer advances a model that distinguishes between two separatesenses. Krämer goes on to support her model with several pieces ofevidence, showing that the temporal and modal meanings of 'werden' exhibitdifferent characteristics.
First, assertive speech acts that commit the speaker to the truth of theexpressed proposition occur only with temporal meaning. Examples such as'Der Verlag wird Ihnen 200 Euro zukommen lassen' can only be interpreted as'The publisher will pay you 200 Euros', if they are uttered as a felicitousassertive speech act, that is, by someone who has the authority to makethis proposition, and who honestly intends to make it true at a later pointin time.
Similarly, in complement clauses that are headed by the verb 'wissen',meaning 'know', 'werden' can only receive a temporal interpretation.Sentences such as 'Maria weiß, dass Peter gehen wird' can only beunderstood as 'Mary knows that Peter will leave'.
A third difference can be observed in relative clauses, where thedistinction between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clausesdifferentiates the modal and temporal meanings of 'werden'. The example'Die Kinder, die Mittagsschlaf machen werden, dürfen mit in den Zoo'translates temporally as 'The children who will take a nap may come alongto the zoo.', if the relative clause is restrictive. By contrast, thenon-restrictive reading 'The children, who will take a nap, may come alongto the zoo.' induces a modal interpretation. As the glosses show, English'will' behaves in exactly the same way.
Lastly, emphasis as conveyed through verum focus enforces a temporalinterpretation of 'werden'. A sentence such as 'Hans WIRD seine Prüfungwiederholen' must be interpreted temporally as 'Hans is indeed going torepeat his exam'. This not only suggests that temporal and modal 'werden'are distinct, it also sets 'werden' apart from the German epistemic modals'müssen' and 'können', which do tolerate verum focus. The sentence 'HansKANN seine Prüfung wiederholen' can be interpreted epistemically as 'Hanscould indeed repeat his exam'.
From this evidence, Krämer conludes that there are two separate senses of'werden', and argues that these senses correspond to different underlyingsyntactic structures. She therefore posits two different lexical entrieswith different semantic and syntactic characteristics. Using theminimalist framework, she proposes that temporal 'werden' is generated inthe functional projection T0 (Klein 1994). In this projection, 'werden'exclusively conveys temporal meaning. This assumption accounts for thoseexamples in which modal meaning of 'werden' is not recognizable, or where amodal interpretation would even render the sentence ungrammatical. Bycontrast, modal 'werden' is generated in the relatively higher functionalprojection MoodP (Cinque 1999). This projection also hosts evidentialadverbs that, like modal 'werden', serve to qualify the truth value of agiven proposition. The assumption that modal 'werden' occurs in thissyntactic position also explains that it does not tolerate verum focus,which evidential adverbs do not either.
CHAPTER 3
Chapter three critiques previous suggestions regarding the diachronicdevelopment of 'werden'. There is a general consensus that the constructionemerged in the late 13th century, and that its future interpretation grewout of the ingressive semantics of 'werden'. Beyond that, the proposedscenarios differ considerably.
The so-called 'erosion theory', first proposed in Weinhold (1883) derivesthe modern construction from uses of 'werden' with a participialcomplement. Middle High German sentences such as 'er wirt mich gernesehende' - 'he will like seeing me' are viewed as the source construction.The present participle ending in '-ende' is assumed to reduce over time tothe ending '- en', making it indistinguishable from a regular infinitive.The erosion theory of 'werden' suffers from the fact that attestedinfinitive complements predate the proposed erosion process, and that theprocess itself is poorly supported by the diachronic evidence. Hence, notonly Krämer but in fact most modern accounts discard this theory.
Leiss (1985) proposes that the German construction came about as aborrowing from Czech. Krämer doubts that the contact situation betweenGerman and Czech was suitable for the proposed grammatical borrowing. Also,quantitative data suggests that the construction did not propagate westwardfrom eastern Germany.
Schmidt (2000) argues that 'werden' came to be used with infinitive insteadof participial complements by way of analogy to the modal verb 'sollen'.Functional overlap between the two verbs motivates the assimilation ofcomplementation patterns. Krämer criticizes that the functional overlap of'werden' and 'sollen' is merely a stipulation that does not fall out of themeaning of the two verbs. Also, Krämer doubts that the proposed model couldresult in the high type frequency of infinitive complements that isattested for early 'werden' plus infinitive. Krämer concludes that asatisfactory theory of the emergence of 'werden' that converges withfindings about its synchrony is still missing. The fourth chapter aims tofill this gap and presents an alternative account of the history of 'werden'.
CHAPTER 4
Starting from the synchronic account in chapter two, Krämer aims to developa diachronic account that accommodates the modern status of 'werden' as apolysemous item with a temporal and an epistemic function. With most otheraccounts, she assumes that the source of the modern construction was'werden' with a present participle complement. The source constructionconveyed ingressive meaning, which is still present in modern sentencessuch as 'Peter wird wütend' - 'Peter gets angry'. Like Schmidt (2000),Krämer views the shift to infinitive complements as a process of analogy.However, whereas Schmidt takes the modal auxiliary 'sollen' to be the modelfor the analogy, Krämer suggests the verb 'beginnen' - 'begin'. This verbshares the ingressive semantics of 'werden', and is therefore a moreconvincing candidate.
The second step in the development of 'werden' is its reanalysis from aningressive lexical verb to a temporal future auxiliary. Krämer adopts aview of reanalysis that includes changes in the type of syntactic head thatis instantiated by a given element. To illustrate, the sentence 'Er wirdtrinken' - 'He will drink' is assumed to contain a number of emptycategories such as TP, AgrP, and CP. The reanalysis from the ingressiveinterpretation 'Er [[ [wird trinken]VP ]]' - 'He starts to drink' thusconsists of 'werden' being reanalyzed as one of the available emptycategories. In this case, this is TP, as in 'Er [[ wird [trinken]VP ]TP ].The temporal auxiliary 'werden' is therefore represented on a higherconstituent of the syntactic tree than its lexical ingressive counterpart,such that the proposed development instantiates 'upward reanalysis'(Roberts and Rousseau 2003). The development of future 'werden' into anepistemic modal involves another upward reanalysis in which 'werden' comesto be located in the relatively higher constituent MoodP.
EVALUATION
This book is highly instructive, as the author manages to make a clear caseof a complex subject matter in less than 150 pages. The criticisms ofprevious accounts are presented clearly, and the general characterizationof 'werden' as a polysemous item that has undergone reanalysis from atemporal auxiliary to an epistemic auxiliary is well-argued and supportedby relevant evidence. The following criticisms therefore apply at the levelof the theoretical assumptions that the author makes.
Regarding the synchronic account of 'werden' as an element with two lexicalentries, it can be disputed whether a complementary distribution oftemporal and epistemic meanings across different constructions reallywarrants the postulation of two separate senses. The fact that 'werden' hasa temporal interpretation in restrictive relative clauses and an epistemicinterpretation in non-restrictive relative clauses is quite striking, butif it is the syntax that disambiguates 'werden', why is it then necessaryto posit lexical entries to do the same job?
Likewise, the postulation of two different syntactic structures fortemporal and epistemic 'werden' is open to debate. Krämer motivates herclaim that epistemic 'werden' is represented at a higher syntacticconstituent with the fact that it encodes non-propositional informationthat can not be negated or questioned. For example, in the sentence 'Hanswird sich das nicht gefallen lassen' - 'Hans will not submit to that',epistemic 'werden' is outside the scope of the negator. Questions such as'Wird Peter schlafen?' - 'Will Peter sleep?' can only be interpretedtemporally. This evidence is accurate, but it only captures the well-knownsemantic fact that increasingly grammaticalized forms take onnon-propositional meanings (Traugott 1989). It is quite possible, andindeed likely, that the semantic change of 'werden' was accompanied by asyntactic change, but such a change has to be documented throughindependent formal evidence.
Since the postulation of two syntactic structures in synchrony is the basisof the diachronic analysis, the latter stands or falls with the former. The'upward reanalysis' of 'werden' in the syntactic tree offers an elegantformalization of the development of 'werden', but it requires a number oftheory-internal assumptions of a minimalist approach to syntax (Roberts andRousseau 2003), and it is not very explicit with respect to the questionhow the semantic change came about.
These criticisms notwithstanding, Krämer's account is of great interest notonly to scholars of German, but to students of tense, modality, andgrammaticalization in general.
REFERENCES
Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999) Adverbs and Functional Heads. A Cross-LinguisticPerspective. Oxford: OUP.
Klein, Wolfgang. (1994) Time in Language. London: Routledge.
Leiss, Elisabeth. (1985) Zur Entstehung des neuhochdeutschen analytischenFuturs. Sprachwissenschaft 10, 250-73.
Roberts, Ian and Anna Rousseau. (2003) Syntactic Change. A MinimalistApproach to Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.
Schmidt, Hans U. (2000) Die Ausbildung des werden-Futurs. Zeitschrift fürDialektologie und Linguistik 67/1, 6-27.
Traugott, Elizabeth C. (1989) On the rise of epistemic meanings in English:An example of subjectification in semantic change. Language 57/1, 33-65.
Weinhold, Karl. (1883) Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik. Paderborn.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Martin Hilpert is a graduate student at Rice University. He is interestedin grammaticalization, construction grammar, cognitive linguistics, andcorpus linguistics. He is currently writing his dissertation, in which hecompares the synchronic use and diachronic development of futureconstructions in the Germanic Languages from a usage-based perspective.
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