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Defining "lexical" vs "grammatical" meaning is difficult, if possible at all. I have tried four times (listed below, in the order that they were conceived). I am pretty content with the last time I went at it, using an elaborated version of Chafe's theory of
verbalization. Of course, many other opinions have been offered here which shed light on the distinction.</div>
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Bill Croft<br>
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font-family:"Times","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;
mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Croft, William. 1990.
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:Times; mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-US; mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">
</span></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;
mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">“A conceptual
framework for grammatical categories (or, a taxonomy of propositional acts).” <i>
Journal of Semantics</i> 7:245-279.</span></div>
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font-family:"Times","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;
mso-bidi-language:AR-SA"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;
mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Croft,
William. 2000. “Grammatical and lexical semantics.” <i>Morphology: A Handbook on Inflection and Word Formation</i>, ed. Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann and Joachim Mugdan, 257-63. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.</span></span><br>
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font-family:"Times","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;
mso-bidi-language:AR-SA"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;
mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Clausner
</span>, Timothy C. and William Croft. 1999. “Domains, image-schemas and construal.”
<i>Cognitive Linguistics</i> 10.1-31.</span></div>
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font-family:"Times","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;
mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Croft, William. 2007.
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“The origins of grammar in the verbalization of experience.” <i>Cognitive Linguistics</i> 18.339-82.</span></span><br>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Jan Rijkhoff <linjr@cc.au.dk><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Sunday, June 21, 2020 5:12 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Bohnemeyer, Juergen <jb77@buffalo.edu><br>
<b>Cc:</b> <LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG> <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories</font>
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<br>
Jürgen wrote: ”The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. … (etc)”. (Jürgen’s first point).<br>
Indeed, but as long as we (i) confuse meaning, form and function and (ii) don’t agree on a list of functions or functional categories (and how they are defined) problems in the analysis of linguistic units will remain.<br>
<br>
In your example (under 1.) you argue that functional elements (tense markers) do not have the same semantic properties as certain lexical forms (time adverb(ial)s), which is uncontroversial.<br>
But that does not mean that tense markers and time adverb(ial)s cannot have the same (communicative, interpersonal) function. ‘Meaning’ is not same as ‘function’. I still haven’t seen a list of functions or functional categories (and their definitions) in this
discussion of ‘functional categories’.<br>
<br>
When you consider the (communicative, interpersonal) function of tense markers and time adverb(ial)s, it is not difficult to see what they have in common: Location in time.<br>
Both tense markers and time adverb(ial)s are ’localizing modifiers’ (one of at least five functional categories; see below), which speakers use to locate a first or second order entity in space or time. The semantic or formal properties (bound vs. free; lexical
vs. grammatical; compulsory vs. optional, high vs. low frequency - etc.) of these elements are also important for a complete grammatical investigation, of course, but irrelevant at this (functional) level of analysis.<br>
<br>
At mentioned above, at least five functional modifier categories (classifying, qualifying, quantifying, localizing or ’anchoring’, and discourse-referential modifiers) are attested in both NPs and clauses. They are discussed in e.g. (also mentioned in an earlier
message):<br>
<br>
Rijkhoff, Jan. 2014. Modification as a propositional act. In María de los Ángeles Gómez González et al. (eds.), Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space, 129-150. Amsterdam: Benjamins.<br>
<a href="https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68/main">https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68/main</a><br>
<a href="https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68.06rij/details">https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sfsl.68.06rij/details</a><br>
I can send a copy of the chapter if you don’t have access to the volume.<br>
<br>
Jan<br>
<br>
J. Rijkhoff - Associate Professor, Linguistics<br>
School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University<br>
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, Building 1485-621<br>
DK-8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK<br>
Phone: (+45) 87162143<br>
URL: <a href="http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr@cc.au.dk">http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/linjr@cc.au.dk</a><br>
<br>
________________________________________<br>
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Bohnemeyer, Juergen <jb77@buffalo.edu><br>
Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2020 7:04 AM<br>
To: Dan I. SLOBIN<br>
Cc: <LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG><br>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories<br>
<br>
Dear Dan et al. — A couple of points here:<br>
<br>
1. The view that the meanings of functional elements can also be expressed by lexical elements is often at best imprecise. A great example of this is the old canard according to which tenseless languages use adverbials that express the semantic contributions
of tense markers. Having studied tenselessness up close and personal for a quarter century, I can assure you they do no such thing. If anything, Yucatec speakers use temporal adverbials less frequently, not more frequently, than English speakers.<br>
<br>
Also, there is no lexical item in English or Yucatec that expresses the meaning of the English past tense. Consider the following mini-discourse:<br>
<br>
(1) Sally got out of her car. She put on her mask.<br>
<br>
Try inserting _in the past_ or _formerly_ in either clause and the meaning changes drastically. The same is true for the Yucatec equivalent.<br>
<br>
The reason this doesn’t work: lexical items such as _in the past_ and _formerly_ express part of the speaker’s intended message, whereas tense markers do not, they are just a coherence device.<br>
<br>
2. Which brings me to the question why no language appears to have inflections for color. As it happens, I’m currently working on a book that tries to answer precisely that question, or more generally, the question why the languages of the world have the functional
categories they do.<br>
<br>
The answer, I argue, is parallel evolution driven by functional selection. There are certain kinds of meanings that lend themselves to facilitating communication by reducing the hearer’s inference load while in their grammaticalized form increasing the speaker’s
production effort only minimally.<br>
<br>
Why does tense lend itself so much more to this kind of thing than color? Because with almost every utterance she encounters (every one except for generics), the hearer has to decide whether the speaker is talking about something that happened in the past,
is presently unfolding, or may yet happen in the future.<br>
<br>
Even the most color-obsessed people in the world do not talk about color with any more than a tiny fraction of that frequency.<br>
<br>
Best — Juergen<br>
<br>
<br>
> On Jun 20, 2020, at 4:20 PM, Dan I. SLOBIN <slobin@berkeley.edu> wrote:<br>
><br>
> Interesting question, Frans – From the viewpoint of processing (rather than definitions of linguistic terms), basic color terms are similar to basic path verbs: high frequency, short, broad range within a basic category (“blue” and not “turquoise” or “cerulean”,
“enter” and not “penetrate” or “invade”). Many semantic domains are characterized by a small, fixed class of basic verbs—e.g., basic gait verbs like “walk,” run,” “crawl”; basic speech-act verbs like “ask,” “answer”; and many more. As you note, manner verbs
do not fit into such closed classes. From this point of view, there is a cline from morphosyntactic to lexical expression of the same basic semantic classes (echoing Jan Rijkhoff’s point that functions of grammatical elements can also be expressed lexically
and by other means).<br>
><br>
> A question for a broader discussion might be why it is that some domains, like color and gait, do not show up toward the grammatical end of the cline (or do they ever?).<br>
><br>
> (Sorry to miss seeing you in Berkeley. I’m doing well in a sedentary state and hope you are too.)<br>
><br>
> Regards,<br>
> Dan<br>
><br>
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 3:58 AM Uni KN <frans.plank@uni-konstanz.de> wrote:<br>
> What about basic colour terms, Dan? They are a class (if you believe in “basicness” as class-delimiting), they are supposedly synchronically closed (max 11/12 or so), and they seem to be internally structured. So, do basic colour terms (in any lg) share
something — other than being a closed class — with case markers (in, let’s say, Turkish) that they don’t share with, say, manner-of-speaking verbs (in, say, English: growl, grunt, whisper, shriek, yell, moan, tut-tut …)?<br>
><br>
> Good to hear from you. We were already booked to come to Berkeley a couple of months ago, for the Germanic Roundtable of indefatigable Irmengard, but then we’ve suddenly had to become sedentary, not a bad state to be in, in principle ...<br>
><br>
> Yours<br>
> Frans<br>
><br>
>> On 19. Jun 2020, at 23:58, Dan I. SLOBIN <slobin@berkeley.edu> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> Let me throw another distinction into this discussion: closed class. The plural markers in Yucatec, for example, are such a class. This factor is important on the level of processing. In speech production, a Yucatec speaker can quickly and automatically
access the plural marker. Closed classes tend to be small, to carry general meanings, and to be of high frequency—all indications of their role in automaticity. This factor, in my opinion, goes beyond what are traditionally treated as “grammatical” elements.
For example, the Germanic and Slavic directional particles are a small, closed class. But the same can be said of directional verbs in the Romance and Turkic languages, among others. A Spanish speaker does not innovate such verbs any more than a Russian
speaker innovates verb prefixes. The Spanish speaker quickly and automatically selects the relevant verb—entrar, salir, etc., just as the Russian speaker selects v- or u- as the relevant verb prefix.<br>
>><br>
>> Regards from an engaged psycholinguist,<br>
>> Dan<br>
>><br>
>> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:51 PM Idiatov Dmitry <honohiiri@yandex.ru> wrote:<br>
>> Dear Juergen,<br>
>><br>
>> I am aware of such concerns that some linguists may have. There are two issues here. Well, actually three, since you brought in inflection at the end of your message.<br>
>><br>
>> The first issue is whether optionality is an accurate description of the distribution of a given morpheme in each particular case where it may appear to be optional at first sight. There are many gradations of “optionality” possible. I mentioned some such
cases (discussed in detail by others) in my (2008) paper.<br>
>><br>
>> However interesting the study of these various gradations of optionality may be, this issue is not really fundamental here. What is fundamental is that being a grammatical meaning is a property of the system of a specific language. A certain meaning is not
grammatical a priori, universally. Admittedly, cross-linguistically some meanings turn out to be grammatical much more frequently than others (such as plural) and can thus be described as prototypical grammatical meanings, but still prototypical is not the
same as universal. So, yes, if the Yucatec plural suffix is completely optional, plural is not a grammatical meaning in Yucatec, despite the fact it is a grammatical meaning in English and many other languages. Similarly, as you would probably agree that evidentiality
is a grammatical meaning in many South American languages, probably you would not wish to say the same about English.<br>
>><br>
>> The third issue is the frequent conflation of being grammatical with being morphologically bound. Grammatical pertains above all to meanings, not to the way these meanings are expressed. The fact that I said that derivational meanings are not grammatical,
if you use obligatoriness as the defining criterion, does not mean that grammatical is the same as inflectional, as I briefly explain in that paper of mine (2008:155-156). By the way, I do agree with you that the concept of inflection is rather flawed and
I try to avoid using it in my own work as much as possible.<br>
>><br>
>> Best,<br>
>> Dmitry<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> 19.06.2020, 19:57, "Bohnemeyer, Juergen" <jb77@buffalo.edu>:<br>
>> Dear Dmitry — I think the typological literature on functional expressions has been warped by the obligatoriness criterion in unfortunate ways. To give you a simple illustration: Yucatec has optional plural marking on both nouns and in verbal agreement.
The Yucatec plural suffix bears no obvious semantic differences to the English _-s_ suffix - it only differs from it in that it is optional (and in its phonological form, obviously). Should I not treat the Yucatec plural marker as expressing a functional category
just because it is optional? That seems a rather suboptimal move to me.<br>
>><br>
>> A similar problem arises in the literature on tense and tenselessness: if a language has a marker with exactly the same semantics as the English past tense, except that its use is optional, should we therefore consider the language tenseless? That would
seem a mistake to me.<br>
>><br>
>> My sense is that what we are dealing with here is just one aspect of a larger problem: theorists and even typologists continue to operate with a notion of ‘inflection’ that was developed on the basis and for the treatment of Indo-European languages. It’s
a concept that seems unproblematic as long as you restrict your attention to languages that package inflectional information in fusional desinences that are part of strictly obligatory templates. Step outside this type of languages, and you begin to run into
all kinds of problems.<br>
>><br>
>> So what I’m saying is this: (i) optional functional categories are very real; (ii) they are at present brutally under-theorized; (iii) this is just one symptom of a larger malaise: a theorizing of the concept of inflection that is typologically woefully
inadequate.<br>
>><br>
>> (As a sidenote to Jan Rijkhoff and others: I like the term ‘functional expressions’ (irrespective of its provenance) as an updated label expressing pretty much the same concept as the traditional ‘syncategoremata’. But, I also believe that we should worry
about the concepts of our terms first and the labels maybe second or third. I realize that that view is arguably a little ironic for a (moderate) Whorfian :-))<br>
>><br>
>> Best — Juergen<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> On Jun 19, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Idiatov Dmitry <honohiiri@yandex.ru> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> I would like to react to Kasper Boye’s summary of the “solutions to the problem of defining ‘grammatical’ on the market”.<br>
>><br>
>> There is also the good old solution of using obligatoriness for these purposes. It goes back to at least Jakobson and Boas, as expressed in the well-known quote by Jakobson “Languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_
convey” (see <a href="https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html">https://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-411.html</a>). The criterion of obligatoriness results in a more restricted set of meanings being categorized as grammatical, as compared to Boye & Harder
(2012)’s criterion of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence. Notably, it excludes the meanings of derivational morphemes. Boye & Harder (2012) do discuss obligatoriness as one of the possible way of defining “grammatical”, but dismiss it for a number
of reasons, for example precisely because it would exclude derivational morphemes. As this kind of objections had been around long before Boye & Harder (2012)’s paper, it so happened that I discussed why I do not find these objections valid in my (2008) paper
on the concepts of grammaticalization and antigrammaticalization.<br>
>><br>
>> Obviously, there is no absolute truth here and the term, in this case “grammatical meaning”, will mean what we decide it to mean. However, using one criterion or another will have different implications. In practical terms, I personally find it useful to
have a more restrictive definition of “grammatical meaning”, for example because it’s easier to apply consistently.<br>
>><br>
>> Best wishes,<br>
>> Dmitry<br>
>><br>
>> --------<br>
>> Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi.<br>
>> (accessible at: <a href="https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95">
https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=24ecb7f0-3d5f-48ad-8da0-bd739bd16d95</a> ; it’s also available from my website, but the server has been down for some time, hence this temporary link)<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> 17.06.2020, 20:11, "Kasper Boye" <boye@hum.ku.dk>:<br>
>> Dear all,<br>
>><br>
>> I would like to first respond to David Gil’s comment on the problems of defining grammatical, then to follow up on Jürgen Bohnemeyer’s ideas about the job grammatical items do.<br>
>><br>
>> There are a couple of solutions to the problem of defining ”grammatical” on the market. One is Christian Lehmann’s (2015) structural definition in terms of autonomy; another one is Peter Harder’s and my own functional and usage-based definition (to which
I think Bohnemeyer was referring in his initial message) in terms of conventionalized secondary discourse prominence (or backgroundedness) (Boye & Harder 2012; references below). Both definitions bring together morphosyntactic and semantic properties of being
grammatical. For instance, being by convention backgrounded (that is, being conventionally associated with background meaning only) entails being dependent on a host expression: a background requires a foreground.<br>
>><br>
>> Based on our 2012 definition, Peter and I are currently working in the same direction (book in prep.) as Bohnemeyer. As we see it, the raison d’être for grammatical items is that they offer a shortcut to meaning, which may be inferable from the context:
knowing by conventions is faster than inferring from context, even if inferencing is guided by expectations (cf. Lehmann’s remark earlier in this thread). In fact, they offer a cheap shortcut: representing background information they can be processed rather
superficially and thus quickly by the hearer.<br>
>><br>
>> Looking now at grammatical items from the speaker perspective, it is clear that the production of grammatical items requires an extra effort. Not only does it require something extra to produce a grammatical item than not to produce anything, recent studies
suggest that grammatical items are in fact a little harder to produce than lexical ones (e.g. Michel Lange et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2019). This may be seen as a consequence of their dependency: when you produce a grammatical item, you also have to consider
which host expression to attach it to.<br>
>><br>
>> If we now look at grammatical items from the speaker and hearer perspective at the same time, a rather sympathetic picture of human communication emerges, a picture that can be characterized in terms of the notion of ‘audience design’: the speaker invests
a little extra production resources so that the hearer can save a little processing resources.<br>
>><br>
>> Why then do languages differ when it comes to the amount of grammatical morphemes? Well, firstly evolution is not optimizing, but satisficing, and we can easily live without grammatical morphemes (our forefathers probably did; cf. Hurford 2012) – it puts
an extra burden on inferencing, but we are quite good at inferencing. Secondly, phonologically concrete morphemes are not the only kind of grammatical items we have. Also construction grammar’s schematic constructions qualify as grammatical items: they are
conventionalized as carriers of background info.<br>
>><br>
>> With best wishes,<br>
>> Kasper<br>
>><br>
>> References<br>
>> Boye, K. & P. Harder. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language 88.1. 1-44.<br>
>> Link: <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf">https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41348882.pdf</a><br>
>><br>
>> Hurford, J.R. (2012). The origins of grammar: Language in the light of evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<br>
>><br>
>> Lehmann, Christian. 2015. Thoughts on grammaticalization, 3rd ed. Berlin, Germany: Language Science Press.<br>
>><br>
>> Michel Lange, V., M. Messerschmidt, P. Harder, H.R. Siebner & K. Boye. (2017). Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages. PLoS ONE 12.11. e0186685.
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685">https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186685</a><br>
>><br>
>> Nielsen, S.R., K. Boye, R. Bastiaanse & V. Michel Lange. 2019. The production of grammatical and lexical determiners in Broca’s aphasia. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104.<br>
>> Link: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104">https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1616104</a><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> Fra: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> På vegne af David Gil<br>
>> Sendt: 17. juni 2020 14:14<br>
>> Til: lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org<br>
>> Emne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories<br>
>><br>
>> Dear Juergen and all,<br>
>><br>
>> My favourite example of an innovation of functional categories comes from some Malayic dialects of central Sumatra — see references below. For the most part, Malayic languages are completely devoid of functional categories; however, in some parts of central
Sumatra, culminating in Kerinci, a system has developed whereby almost every word in the language has two forms, absolute and oblique, formally distinguished by complex rules of ablaut. The functions of the absolute/oblique alternation are also complex, but
I'll mention just one of them, since it ties in to earlier discussion in this thread about the development of articles: in phrase final position, a noun will typically occur in the absolute, however, if it takes the oblique form it is interpreted as definite.
McKinnon et al trace the historical development of the absolute/oblique alternation in terms of a coalescence of two separate developments: (a) the grammaticalization of erstwhile phrase-final phonological alternations; and (b) the phonological attraction
of an erstwhile free form (cognate to Standard Malay nya). Comparative evidence suggests that these developments are very recent, and since there are no non-Malayic languages in the vicinity that would form the basis for a contact explanation, it seems pretty
clear that the absolute/oblique alternation constitutes an internally-motivated development of a functional category.<br>
>><br>
>> Best,<br>
>><br>
>> David<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> McKinnon, Timothy (2011) The morphophonology and morphosyntax of Kerinci Word-shape alternations, PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark.<br>
>> McKinnon, Timothy, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2011) Object agreement and ‘pro-drop’ in Kerinci Malay, Language 87.4:715–750.<br>
>> McKinnon, Timothy, Gabriella Hermon, Yanti and Peter Cole (2018) "From Phonology to Syntax: Insights from Malay", in H. Bartos, M. den Dikken, Z. Bánreti and T. Varadi eds., Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and
Semantics, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 94, Springer, Berlin, 349-371. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_22<br>
>> McKinnon, Timothy, Yanti, Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon (2015) "Infixation and Apophony in Malay: Description and Developmental Stages", Linguistik Indonesia 33.1:1-19.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> On 16/06/2020 04:48, Bohnemeyer, Juergen wrote:<br>
>> Dear colleagues — I’m looking for examples of innovations of functional categories. By ‘functional categories’, I mean the ‘grammatical categories’ of traditional grammar, such as tense, mood, person, gender, case, etc. I propose a more technical definition
below.<br>
>><br>
>> Here is what I mean by ‘innovation’: language families or genera in which the functional expression in question is (i) grammaticalized in one or more members or branches while (ii) being absent in others, with (iii) the balance of evidence pointing to acquisition
in the former languages/branches rather than loss in the latter, and (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I happen
to be specifically interested in innovation of functional categories in the absence of contact models.)<br>
>><br>
>> I realize of course that certainty about (iii) and (iv) is in many if not most cases not to be had. Consider for illustration the emergence of definite articles in Western Europe (Celtic, Romance, Germanic) during the “Dark Ages”. In this case, we can be
certain that this was an innovation event due to the presence of historical records both from ancestors of some of the Indo-European languages that developed articles and from ancestors of those that didn’t. But when and where this innovation started, and
what role (if any) contact with languages from outside Western Europe, such as Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, may have played, appears to continue to be unclear.<br>
>><br>
>> It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any
substrate or adstrate language.<br>
>><br>
>> As a working definition, functional expressions in general (a superordinate category of functional categories in the narrow sense) might be defined as (i) morphemes that (ii) do not belong to any major lexical category, but (iii) enter into fully productive
and compositional combinations with (projections of) members of lexical categories. This very broad and general characterization would encompass a host of subtypes. Of great interest to me is the observation that these subtypes are not uniform in how commonly
they are grammaticalized vs. missing in the languages of the world. Some functional expressions, such as negation, occur in every single human language. Some, such as adnominal or adverbial expressions of quantification, apparently are present in all languages
except for languages that rely on complex predicative workarounds (existential predication for existential quantification, conditional-like structures for universal quantification).<br>
>><br>
>> Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS
chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they
occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load.<br>
>><br>
>> This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared
to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result
can never be focalized except metalinguistically.<br>
>><br>
>> I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-)<br>
>><br>
>> Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen<br>
>><br>
>> --<br>
>> David Gil<br>
>><br>
>> Senior Scientist (Associate)<br>
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution<br>
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History<br>
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany<br>
>><br>
>> Email: gil@shh.mpg.de<br>
>> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895<br>
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091<br>
>> ,<br>
>> _______________________________________________<br>
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>><br>
>> _______________________________________________<br>
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>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> --<br>
>> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
>> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies<br>
>> Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science<br>
>> University at Buffalo<br>
>><br>
>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus<br>
>> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260<br>
>> Phone: (716) 645 0127<br>
>> Fax: (716) 645 3825<br>
>> Email: jb77@buffalo.edu<br>
>> Web: <a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/">http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</a><br>
>><br>
>> Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours.<br>
>><br>
>> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In<br>
>> (Leonard Cohen)<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> _______________________________________________<br>
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>> <a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> --<br>
>> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><br>
>> Dan I. Slobin<br>
>> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics<br>
>> University of California, Berkeley<br>
>> email: slobin@berkeley.edu<br>
>> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708<br>
>> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><br>
>> _______________________________________________<br>
>> Lingtyp mailing list<br>
>> Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org<br>
>> <a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a><br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
> --<br>
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><br>
> Dan I. Slobin<br>
> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics<br>
> University of California, Berkeley<br>
> email: slobin@berkeley.edu<br>
> address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708<br>
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
> Lingtyp mailing list<br>
> Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org<br>
> <a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a><br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies<br>
Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science<br>
University at Buffalo<br>
<br>
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus<br>
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260<br>
Phone: (716) 645 0127<br>
Fax: (716) 645 3825<br>
Email: jb77@buffalo.edu<br>
Web: <a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/">http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</a><br>
<br>
Office hours will be held by Skype, WebEx, or phone until further notice. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu 12:30-1:30 and Th 2:30-3:20 open specifically for remote office hours.<br>
<br>
There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In<br>
(Leonard Cohen)<br>
<br>
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