Tine Breban

The grammaticalization and subjectification of English adjectives expressing difference into plurality/distributivity markers and quantifiers

This paper deals with grammaticalization and subjectification processes affecting adjectives in the English noun phrase (henceforth NP). It investigates Adamsons (2000) claim that grammaticalization in the NP is accompanied by movement of the grammaticalizing adjective to more leftward positions in the premodifying string. I will argue that this type of movement is implied in the concepts of grammaticalization (Traugott 1989, 1995) and subjectification (Langacker 1990, 1998, 1999) as they apply to the NP. I will then illustrate my argument with a semantic analysis of six adjectives of difference, different, distinct, divers(e), several, sundry and various, whose diachronic development is established on the basis of six corpus studies.This paper deals with grammaticalization and subjectification processes affecting adjectives in the English noun phrase (henceforth NP). It investigates Adamsons (2000) claim that grammaticalization in the NP is accompanied by movement of the grammaticalizing adjective to more leftward positions in the premodifying string. I will argue that this type of movement is implied in the concepts of grammaticalization (Traugott 1989, 1995) and subjectification (Langacker 1990, 1998, 1999) as they apply to the NP. I will then illustrate my argument with a semantic analysis of six adjectives of difference, different, distinct, divers(e), several, sundry and various, whose diachronic development is established on the basis of six corpus studies.

English Adjectives of Comparison: Lexical and Grammaticalized Uses

The book is concerned with a largely unrecognized grammaticalization process: deictification, or the development from quality - attributing to deictically used adjectives in the English noun phrase. On the basis of the synchronic and diachronic corpus-study of six English adjectives of comparison, deictification is shown to involve unstudied variants of subjectification and decategorialization.

Deictification: The development of secondary deictic meanings by adjectives in the English NP

In this article we make a case for recognizing deictification as a type of grammaticalization and semantic shift in the NP analogous to auxiliarization in the VP. The specific analogy we point out is between lexical verbs that grammaticalize into secondary auxiliaries bound by the finite, as in is going to , has to + verb, and lexically full adjectives that grammaticalize into postdeterminers bound by the primary determiner, as in a different , the same + noun. We present five case studies of the development of postdeterminer meanings, based on the analysis of diachronic and synchronic data. The adjectives studied are opposite , complete , old , regular and necessary , whose postdeterminer uses relate to the basic deictic systems of space, quantity, time and modality. Our analysis of the data shows that the mechanism of secondary deictification can be given a unified characterization as the semantic shift by which a general relation expressed by the adjective is given a subjective reference point in or relative to the speech event.

Structural persistence: A case based on the grammaticalization of English adjectives of difference

In this article, it is proposed that processes of grammaticalization are determined and constrained not only by the source semantics of the grammaticalizing item, i.e. lexical persistence in the sense of Hopper (1991), but also by the original structure the item occurs in. This previously unrecognized feature of grammaticalization is referred to as structural persistence . The need to distinguish a structural equivalent to lexical persistence is argued on the basis of a particularly exemplary case, viz. the grammaticalization processes found with one lexically specific set of grammaticalizing elements in English, adjectives of difference such as other , different , various , etc. Before their grammaticalization, these adjectives occur in two different structural configurations, viz. (1) external comparison, in which the adjective describes a relation of difference between the referent of the noun phrase and a second, separately coded, entity, and (2) internal comparison, in which the entities that are said to be different are all denoted by the noun phrase containing the adjective. Even though they undergo the same general semantic process of grammaticalization and delexicalization in both structures, the adjectives acquire a different grammatical function in each of them. The different outcomes of the grammaticalization process can only be explained by relating them to the specific properties of the two source structures.

What is secondary grammaticalization? Trying to see the wood for the trees in a confusion of interpretations

Abstract Over the years, several studies on grammaticalization have used the contrasting terms primary and secondary grammaticalization for, roughly speaking, changes from lexical to grammatical and from grammatical to (more) grammatical. Primary grammaticalization has been treated as instantiating prototypical grammaticalization. This article scrutinizes the concept of secondary grammaticalization with the goal of assessing whether it has explanatory power and encompasses processes of grammaticalization that are sufficiently different from primary grammaticalization to justify distinct terminology. In the first part of the article, I take stock of the different definitions and interpretations of the concept of secondary grammaticalization in the literature. I conclude from this review that there is no unified definition and that the concept has in fact been applied to an array of widely differing changes. In the second part, I take a closer look at five distinct interpretations, which together cover the spectrum of phenomena featuring in the literature, in order to assess their explanatory power and relevance. The conclusion from this exercise is that the changes identified in each of the five definitions can be captured within a general definition of grammaticalization, and neither of them necessitates the addition of secondary grammaticalization as a separate notion.

Secondary determiners as markers of generalized instantiation in English noun phrases

Abstract This paper is concerned with English noun phrases that denote generalized instances: they do not refer to actual spatio-temporal instances, but to virtual ones that are abstracted from a limited number of actual instances, e.g., a student in Three times, a student complained (Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume II: Descriptive application, Stanford University Press, 1991, Dynamicity, fictivity, and scanning: The imaginative basis of logic and linguistic meaning, Cambridge University Press, 2005, forthcoming). Langacker likens generalized instances to generic ones, which constitute “global” generalizations over all actual instances of a type. On the basis of authentic data, I argue that, even though the profiled instance denoted by generic and generalized noun phrases is similar, the way the respective instances are accessed in discourse is very different. My data set consists of English noun phrases that are explicitly marked for generalized instantiation by the addition of a secondary determiner such as same in The twin brothers bought the same car or kind of in There was no way we could match that kind of offer. I compare noun phrases of four sets of secondary determiners, viz. adjectives of multiple exposure (usual), of identity (same, identical), of similarity (similar, comparable) and type noun constructions (kind of/type of/sort of). These data also allow me to refine the concept of generalized instantiation in terms of its semantic subtypes, the semantic interaction between secondary determiner and primary determiner, and the selection criteria for secondary determiners that can express it.

Proper names used as modifiers: A comprehensive functional analysis

My central concern is the special use of proper names in the English noun phrase first discussed by Rosenbach ( 2006 , 2007 , 2010 ; Koptjevskaja-Tamm & Rosenbach 2005 ): proper names which are used as modifiers with an identifying function, e.g. the Bush administration (‘Which administration does the noun phrase refer to? The one headed by Bush’). On the basis of a corpus study, I argue that existing analyses of Rosenbach ( 2007 ) and Schlucker ( 2013 ) fail to account for all cases; they also fail to capture the seemingly contradictory syntactic and functional properties of these proper names in a unified way. My alternative analysis is framed within Hallidays ( 1994 ) functional model of the English noun phrase, but radically thinks beyond the typical association of functions with word classes (see also Rijkhoff 2009 ). My proposal is that the majority of these proper names can be analysed as epithets, a function typically associated with adjectival modifiers such as the red car . A smaller set, proper name modifiers such as a Kerry supporter , are analysed as complements (Payne & Huddleston 2002 ). I end by discussing the implications of this dual analysis for another open question, whether proper name modifiers are morphosyntactically phrasal modifiers or part of compounds.