22.739, Sum: Semantics: Sometimes vs. Maybe

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-739. Sun Feb 13 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.739, Sum: Semantics: Sometimes vs. Maybe

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1)
Date: 11-Feb-2011
From: George Huttar [gukageorge at gmail.com]
Subject: Semantics: Sometimes vs. Maybe
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2011 13:23:09
From: George Huttar [gukageorge at gmail.com]
Subject: Semantics: Sometimes vs. Maybe

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Query for this summary posted in LINGUIST Issue: 22.438                                                                                                                                                
 

First, my thanks to the following for their quick and helpful replies to my 
inquiry of (LINGUIST List 22-438. Tue Jan 25, 2011) about languages 
that "use an expression meaning 'sometimes' to express possibility":
Erin Tavano                       
William J. Sullivan
Eduard Werner	  
Bruce Despain
Jose Luis Guijarro Morales	
Sophia A. Malamud
Michael Swan	                        
James Essegbey
Greg Shenaut
	
With regard to the distribution of the phenomenon, their responses 
together suggest that it may be fairly widespread in Germanic and 
Romance languages and languages that have been in contact with 
such, but not necessarily elsewhere:

The use of 'sometimes' in the sense of 'maybe' is not found in Slavic 
languages.

Germanic:

Eduard Werner reports that in some Saxon dialects of German, near 
Leipzig, manchmal 'sometimes' is used for Standard German (SG) 
vielleicht 'maybe' in a pragmatic context exemplified by Wissen Sie 
manchmal... 'do you perhaps know...?', a source of amusement among 
SG speakers.

One respondent called my attention to English 'it depends' as an 
expression that serves for both senses (e.g., A: Can you grow corn 
here? B: It depends.)

Romance:

Spanish shows some overlap, via the noun vez, in "a veces" 
'sometimes' and "talvez" 'maybe'; the respondent suggests, "My 
intuition is that in 'a veces' we are implying that this and that may 
happen a certain set of times, while with 'talvez' we are pointing to the 
fact that at one time this and that might happen (but not at other 
times)."

"French 'des fois (que)', literally 'sometimes', is used to mean 
something like 'supposing' or 'in the case that' or 'could be'".

Other: "in Ghanaian Pidgin English ... 'sometime' is used both for 
'sometimes' and 'maybe'".

With regard to a rationale for the use of one expression with both 
'sometimes' and 'maybe' senses, one respondent pointed out that 
sometimes and maybe both function as existential quantifiers, differing 
only in whether their domain of application is times/events or possible 
worlds, respectively. (See de Swart, Henriëtte: 1991. Adverbs of 
Quantification: A Generalized Quantifier Approach. Ph.D. Dissertation, 
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen; and various works on modality by Angelika 
Kratzer.)

Empirical data from English word association are provided by Erin 
Tavano's doctoral work. She reports, "According to the U[niversity of] 
S[outh] F[lorida] free association norms, 'maybe' is a strong associate 
of 'sometimes', in English. That is, when people hear 'sometimes' and 
are asked to respond with the first word that comes to mind, they often 
say 'maybe'. It is the second most common response, the first being 
'always'". Link to the association data at:

http://w3.usf.edu/FreeAssociation/AppendixA/Cue_Target_Pairs.S

And Llnk to background on the USF database at:

http://w3.usf.edu/FreeAssociation/

Finally, the extension of meaning is not always from temporal to 
possible: literature on the cartography of adverbials was mentioned, 
according to which "in English the modal and temporal are ranked 
opposite to the ranking of some other languages. Hence, where one 
language can generalize on the temporal 'sometimes' and use the 
same word for the modal meaning of both, another will generalize on 
the modal adverb and use it for both".

Sometimes I'll write an article on 'sometimes' and 'maybe' some day!

George Huttar 

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics




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