Abstract
Grammaticalization of modal markers has long been thought of in terms of change from deontic to epistemic meaning. This change, then, is typically thought of as a mapping between conceptual domains. Contrary to this perception, I argue in this paper that (1) change from deontic to epistemic (that is, the acquisition of epistemic meaning by deontic markers), although salient in many European languages, is cross-linguistically a marginal tendency, (2), the cross-linguistically most salient tendency in the development of modal markers is towards greater speaker-orientation, and (3), this change can best be explained by primarily referring to pragmatic processes, rather than conceptual processes. I substantiate my claims by analyzing the cross-linguistic modality data in Bybee et al. (1994), by providing a catalogue of etymologies of Modern Japanese modal markers, and by analyzing the polysemy and semantic change of one specific marker in Japanese language history (-be-si) in detail.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 269-294 |
Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | Journal of Historical Pragmatics |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2007 |
Keywords
- Deontic and epistemic
- Grammaticalization
- Japanese
- Modality
- Speaker-orientation
- Subjectification
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language