23.1314, Qs: External Necessity, Epistemic/Deontic Possibility

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LINGUIST List: Vol-23-1314. Thu Mar 15 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.1314, Qs: External Necessity, Epistemic/Deontic Possibility

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Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:23:15
From: Igor Yanovich [yanovich at mit.edu]
Subject: External Necessity, Epistemic/Deontic Possibility

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The older works on grammaticalization of modality (Bybee et al. 1994, 
van der Auwera and Plungian 1998) do not list a development of an 
epistemic possibility sense from a circumstantial/deontic necessity 
sense. Potentially, such a development occurred in some Dinka 
dialects (such ambiguity is manifested in the speech of a speaker of 
Dinka Bor I'm working with at the moment), and in Adyghe 
(Kimmelmann 2010, field notes). I do not know much more at the 
moment; even the direction of change is not supported by evidence, 
though from the general considerations of how grammaticalization of 
modal meanings works, I'd be surprised if the development went in the 
other direction.

Here are two examples from Dinka Bor illustrating the phenomenon (I 
omit tones and phonations): 


Auxiliary ''dhil'', DEONTIC NECESSITY: 

(1) Majok dhil riN thaal
Majok dhil meat cook
''Majok _must_ cook meat'' (can be used as a command)


Auxiliary ''dhil'', EPISTEMIC POSSIBILITY:

(2) a luel Dau, ye Majok a dhil riN thaal
AGR say Dau COMP? Majok AGR dhil meat cook
''Dau says that Majok _maybe_ is cooking meat''

Would anyone know of other languages which would have such 
polysemy, or maybe even had a recorded history of such historical 
change? 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Semantics
                     Syntax
                     Typology






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