LINGUIST List 23.4404
Mon Oct 22 2012
Diss: Germanic/ General Ling/ Historical Ling/ Text/Corpus Ling/ Danish/ Norwegian Bokmål/ Swedish: Beijering: 'Expressions of epistemic modality in Mainland Scandinavian...'
Editor for this issue: Lili Xia
<lxialinguistlist.org>
Date: 21-Oct-2012
From: Karin Beijering <k.beijering
gmail.com>
Subject: Expressions of epistemic modality in Mainland Scandinavian. A study into the lexicalization-grammaticalization-pragmaticalization interface.
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Institution: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Program: Center for Language and Cognition
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2012
Author: Karin Beijering
Dissertation Title: Expressions of epistemic modality in Mainland Scandinavian. A study into the lexicalization-grammaticalization-pragmaticalization interface.
Linguistic Field(s):
General Linguistics
Historical Linguistics
Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s):
Danish (dan)
Norwegian Bokmål (nob)
Swedish (swe)
Language Family(ies): Germanic
Dissertation Director:
Jack Hoeksema
Muriel Norde
Dissertation Abstract:
This dissertation investigates the rise of epistemic expressions inrelation to different types of language change, viz. lexicalization,grammaticalization and pragmaticalization. Four case studies from thedomain of epistemic modality in the Mainland Scandinavian languages,i.e. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are discussed. These casestudies are concerned with the modal auxiliaries 'must/may', theinterrogative/epistemic adverb 'I wonder', the epistemic adverb 'maybe',and the discourse marker 'I think.' These epistemic phenomena poseproblems for traditional analyses within the framework ofgrammaticalization studies, because they are all at the interface of(most current definitions of) grammaticalization, lexicalization andpragmaticalization.
This thesis presents a novel model of analysis and a unified account oflanguage change centered on the notion of a composite change. Acomposite change is composed of formal reanalysis and semantic re-interpretation, accompanying primitive changes at different linguisticlevels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics,discourse/pragmatics), and the concomitants of these (micro-)changes.These (micro-)changes cluster with respect to their convergingproperties (=interfaces), but stand out in case they are divergingproperties (=unique properties). This is the essence of the clusteringapproach to language change. Clusters of correlated changes maycorrespond to a composite change traditionally labeled'grammaticalization', 'lexicalization' or 'pragmaticalization', but they mayalso pattern in alternative ways. This is what happens in the casestudies in the present thesis.
The case studies in this dissertation defy strict categorization.Therefore, it is proposed to give up the idea that linguistic changescan be assigned to predefined categories. Instead, it is argued that it ismore sensible to reduce lexicalization, grammaticalization andpragmaticalization to their basic mechanisms of change, primitivechanges and the concomitants of these (micro-)changes. Theadvantage of a clustering approach, as opposed to categorization, isthat one can identify prototypical and marginal instances oflexicalization, grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, as well as theinterfaces between these different types of language change.
Page Updated: 22-Oct-2012