29.3638, Review: General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Syntax: Hengeveld, Narrog, Olbertz (2017)

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Subject: 29.3638, Review: General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Syntax: Hengeveld, Narrog, Olbertz (2017)

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Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2018 09:38:41
From: Brendon Yoder [byoder at umail.ucsb.edu]
Subject: The Grammaticalization of Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality

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EDITOR: Kees  Hengeveld
EDITOR: Heik  Narrog
EDITOR: Hella  Olbertz
TITLE: The Grammaticalization of Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality
SUBTITLE: A Functional Perspective
SERIES TITLE: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Brendon Yoder, University of California, Santa Barbara

SUMMARY

This edited volume includes ten papers discussing the grammaticalization of
tense, aspect, modality, and evidentiality (TAME) from a functional
perspective. After a brief introduction by the editors, the first three main
papers are general discussions of the grammaticalization of TAME, while the
remaining seven chapters are language-specific studies. The theory of
Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld & Mackenzie 2008) features prominently
in the volume. This framework as applied to the grammaticalization of TAME is
developed extensively in the chapters by Hengeveld and Giomi and is discussed
at least briefly in all the remaining chapters.

In his chapter “A hierarchical approach to grammaticalization” (pp 13-38),
Kees Hengeveld argues for Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) as a framework
for modeling grammaticalization. The author gives a brief overview of FDG and
then shows how grammaticalization fits with the model, using examples of
grammaticalization of TAME throughout. The FDG model of grammar is
hierarchical, with a pragmatic (“interpersonal”) level and semantic
(“representational”) level. Within each level are nested layers, with each
successive layer having wider semantic scope than the layer within it.
Hengeveld argues that grammaticalization always involves a scope increase in
function; that is, contentive change always results in wider scope. Examples
of layer changes at the representational level are given, while at the
interpersonal level a single possible English example of layer changes is
given. Functional scope can also increase through a change from the
representational level to the interpersonal level, but not vice versa.
Hengeveld also argues that form and function do not proceed in tandem in the
grammaticalization process, although the two are related in a relative way. At
any given stage the function might grammaticalize further (increase in scope),
while the form might also grammaticalize further (decrease in lexicality and
formal independence) or remain the same. Conversely, at any given stage the
form might grammaticalize further, while the function might also
grammaticalize further or remain the same. The crucial point is that there is
no backward movement along the cline. Discussion of TAME is limited to
examples showing how FDG can model grammaticalization.

The chapter by Riccardo Giomi (pp 39-74) titled “The interaction of components
in a Functional Discourse Grammar account of grammaticalization” follows up on
Hengeveld’s chapter by presenting a more in-depth look at an FDG account of
grammaticalization. While Hengeveld discusses primarily the Grammatical
Component of FDG, with its two levels and various layers, Giomi proposes an
integration of the other two components of FDG into an FDG account of
grammaticalization. These two are the Conceptual Component and the Contextual
Component. Of particular importance is the Contextual Component, where
grammar-external information relevant to the grammatical categories of the
language is modeled. Grammaticalization is seen as a shift from the Contextual
Component to the Grammatical Component in a process of conventionalization.
Conventionalization is “the process whereby a context-specific inferential
meaning is reanalyzed as a new grammatically encoded function” (47). The bulk
of the chapter is a presentation of this reanalysis process, largely following
Heine (2002). In this earlier work four stages are identified: initial stage,
bridging context, switch context, and conventionalization. The initial stage
and conventionalization stage represent the start and end points of the
grammaticalization process, respectively. The bridging context is one in which
a new meaning is possible through pragmatic inference in a particular context.
In the switch context, the new meaning is now possible in a context
incompatible with the source meaning. Heine’s four stages are followed exactly
here, simply being cast in an FDG framework. At the end of the chapter two
case studies are presented. The first is the grammaticalization of Old English
<sculan> ‘owe’ into the future temporal marker <shall>. The second is the
change in Modern Greek <tha> from future tense to subjective epistemic
modality. Like the previous chapter, this chapter’s primary focus is the
adequacy of FDG for modeling grammaticalization, with illustrations of the
grammaticalization of TAME. 

Heiko Narrog’s chapter “Relationship of form and function in
grammaticalization – the case of modality” (pp 75-110) discusses
grammaticalization of both form and function, and the relationship between the
two. Like the previous two authors, he argues that grammaticalization of
function is primary while grammaticalization of form is “rather epiphenomenal”
(75). Also like the previous two authors, he argues that grammaticalization of
form and function need not proceed in tandem, but in most cases an advancement
in one means that the other will either advance as well or remain the same.
Grammaticalization can begin at any point on a hierarchy of functional
categories; because of this, a correlation between form and function in
grammaticalization only makes sense for individual constructions. The author
cites his previous work where this has been argued for at length (Narrog 2005;
2012), but he presents it again here because of a persistent assumption in
grammaticalization studies that cross-linguistic correlations of form and
function can be established. Grammaticalization of the form and function of an
individual construction in a language is expected to proceed unidirectionally,
but since the starting point for each construction is different, comparison
across constructions is not productive. Formal grammaticalization is seen as
the result of online, rather mechanical processes of phonological and
morphological reduction. The cognitive and social mechanisms of the
grammaticalization of function, that is, the shift from pragmatic inference in
a specific context to grammatically encoded function, remain to be explored.
Narrog offers a few possible lines of exploration into these mechanisms. These
include Haspelmath’s (1999) notion of speaker “extravagance” and the
possibility that extension of context is cognitively perceptible while
reduction is not. He also suggests that social factors in language change
might be relevant. Examples of grammaticalization of modal constructions are
presented from English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

The chapter by Sophie Villerius (pp 111-132), “Modality and aspect marking in
Suriname Javanese: Grammaticalization and contact-induced change”, is the
first language-specific study in the volume. The author discusses
contact-induced and language-internal changes in the modal and aspectual
auxiliaries of Suriname Javanese. Javanese, an Austronesian language spoken
primarily in Indonesia, was brought to Suriname by Javanese laborers around
the beginning of the 20th century, where it is now in intensive contact with
the other languages of the country, primarily Dutch and Sranan Tongo. Based on
a comparison of small corpora of Indonesian Javanese and Suriname Javanese,
this paper examines two changes in modal markers and two changes in aspect
markers. The changes in modal markers appear to be strictly formal, with no
functional change. The first is a lexical borrowing of the Sranan modal
auxiliary <proberi> ‘try’, which replaces the Javanese modal auxiliary
<jajal>. The second is a language-internal change, the replacement of the
auxiliary marking ability <isa> with another auxiliary <inter>. The first
aspect change involves a change in function of the auxiliary <arep>, away from
future in Indonesian Javanese toward prospective aspect ‘be going to’ in
Suriname Javanese. The final change, which is still tentative given the
paucity of data, is a possible formal shift in the marking of progressive
aspect from the auxiliary <lagi> to a type of presentational structure with an
existential verb. This paper is informative in that it brings together studies
of contact-induced change, primarily Matras (2007) and Sakel (2007), with
studies of (language-internal) grammaticalization, primarily Hengeveld (2011).
The research in this chapter could be enhanced by increasing the size and
diversity of the corpora of both Indonesian Javanese and Suriname Javanese. It
might also benefit from comparing Suriname Javanese with the form of Javanese
that was spoken by the migrant workers who first made their way from Indonesia
to Suriname rather than with modern Indonesian Javanese, which has been in
intense contact with Indonesian (Errington 1998) and thus may not be the best
baseline for comparison unless this contact situation is also considered.

The chapter by Lotta Jalava, “Grammaticalization of modality and evidentiality
in Tundra Nenets” (pp 133-161), proposes two diachronic pathways for the
development of modal and evidential suffixes in Tundra Nenets. The first
primary pathway is the finitization of participial predicates, resulting in
most of the modal and evidential suffixes in the language. The second pathway
is insubordination (Evans 2007), in which a subordinate clause comes to be
used as a main clause. These two diachronic pathways correspond nicely to the
synchronic morphosyntax. The modal and evidential suffixes resulting from
finitization of participial predicates are part of a single formal class of
verbal suffixes, all occurring in a single suffix slot. The single evidential
suffix resulting from insubordination has quite different structural
properties, resembling its diachronic predecessor. Verbs with this evidential
are not marked for tense, and the person suffixes on these verbs are identical
with possessive pronominal forms. The various modal and evidential suffixes
are of varying ages. Some are recent developments in Tundra Nenets, with both
the older participial and new finite verb forms attested in the modern
language. For others, only the new form is attested. Diachronic pathways are
postulated based on cognates in other Samoyedic languages and previous
reconstructions of Proto Samoyedic. This chapter contributes to Uralic studies
in being the first to propose a pathway for the development of the Tundra
Nenets modal and evidential suffixes. It also contributes to the broader
typological theme of this volume in providing examples of grammaticalization
of both the form and function of TAME markers. Confirming the position of the
first three authors in this volume (Hengeveld, Giomi, Narrog), both the form
and the function of the Tundra Nenets suffixes developed unidirectionally, but
not necessarily in tandem.

The chapter by Shadi Davari and Mehrdad Naghzguy-Kohan (pp 163-189), titled
“The grammaticalization of progressive aspect in Persian”, traces the
development of the Persian lexical verb <dâštan> ‘have’ into a progressive
auxiliary. Cross-linguistically, progressive constructions commonly develop
from lexical items expressing location and motion, while  development from a
possessive construction as in Persian is unusual. The authors demonstrate
clearly how this grammaticalization happened, showing how both the form and
the function of possessive <dâštan> developed to a point where reanalysis as
a progressive was just a small step. In terms of form, the point of crossover
from possessive to progressive occurred in relative clauses that shared a
subject with the matrix clause. In terms of function, <dâštan> developed
from indicating temporary possession, or ‘being with’ a concrete entity, to
indicating ‘being with’ a process or event. After reanalysis, the construction
spread beyond same-subject relative clauses to other parts of the grammar. At
the end of the paper the authors present their Auxiliation Dimensions Model,
the details of which are being written up in another publication (Davari and
Naghzguy-Kohan, forthcoming). This model considers three dimensions of
auxiliation: the force (functional motivation), the lexical source of the
auxiliary, and the degree of auxiliation from full lexical verb to highly
grammaticalized auxiliary. It is not entirely clear from the short
presentation here how the Auxiliation Dimensions Model reflects processes
specific to the grammaticalization of auxiliaries as opposed to
grammaticalization pathways in general. 

In his chapter “Grammaticalization as morphosyntax and representation: Mood
from tense markers in the Old Irish and Romance conditional” (pp 191-214),
Carlos García Castillero discusses the development of the conditional
construction in Western Romance languages and Old Irish, with comparison to
the English conditional construction. In all three languages, a previous
temporal meaning of future-in-the-past (e.g. ‘She told me that she WOULD SEE’)
came to be reanalyzed with a hypothetical modal meaning in the main clause of
a conditional construction (e.g. ‘If she went, she WOULD SEE’). García
Castillero notes that this reanalysis involves a change from subordinate
clause to main clause, but this is actually a rather small step. The source
construction, a complement clause of verbs of speaking and perceiving,
cross-linguistically tends to have fewer features of subordinate clause syntax
than other types of subordinate clauses and is a frequent source of
insubordination (Evans 2007). Further, the resulting construction, while
syntactically a main clause in all three languages, is semantically dependent
on the adverbial clause containing the condition. In all these languages, the
source construction involved a combination of past tense marking with
past-imperfective (‘imperfect’) marking, leading the author to suggest that
this recurrent form-function pairing in grammaticalization involves a
“relatively straightforward diachronic path” (192). While the formal changes
were broadly similar, the grammatical details of each language gave different
results. In English, the resulting periphrastic construction involves an
auxiliary and a main verb. In Western Romance, the conditional is marked with
a suffix resulting from the coalescence of the past and imperfect suffixes. In
Old Irish, the two previously existing morphemes were combined to serve a new
function. García Castillero proposes that this represents a new kind of
morphologization that calls for a broader definition of the term. Previous
studies discuss morphologization as either coalescence of previous lexical
items or as reanalysis of morphophonological alternations as functionally
distinct. By including the development of the Old Irish conditional
construction, the proposed broader definition of morphologization is “every
diachronic process leading to the creation of a morpheme, whether based on
independent or dependent lexical elements, phonological features, or on the
combination of previously existing morphemes which comes to express a new
meaning” (209).

Jimena Tena Dávalos in “The end of a cycle: Grammaticalization of the future
tense in Mexican Spanish” (pp 215-239) presents a history of the development
of future tense marking in Mexican Spanish, including a corpus study showing
currently emerging developments. In the history of the language, future tense
marking has gone through a cyclical process where an analytic future
construction develops into a synthetic form, the synthetic form develops other
functions such as expression of epistemic modality, and a new analytic future
construction emerges. Classical Latin had a (synthetic) future suffix. This
was replaced by an analytic construction with the auxiliary <habere> ‘have’;
this analytic construction, in turn, grammaticalized into verbal inflections
in Western Romance languages. Now an analytic construction with ‘go’ +
infinitive has emerged alongside the synthetic future construction. The main
contribution of this study is an analysis of a diachronic corpus showing the
functional development of the synthetic and analytic future constructions over
the course of the past 600 years. The synthetic future was originally used
almost exclusively with future time reference, while in current Mexican
Spanish about 25% of occurrences express modal meanings. The newer analytic
form with the verb ‘go’ was originally used to indicate motion. In an
intermediate stage it was used most frequently to indicate prospective aspect,
while current Mexican Spanish speakers use the form most frequently with
simple future reference and secondarily to indicate immediate future or
prospective aspect. The author compares these findings with the model of FDG,
which predicts that grammaticalization always involves an increase in
functional scope. The functional scope of TAME marking as defined in the model
fits with the development of the synthetic and analytic future markers in
Mexican Spanish. 

The chapter by Aude Rebotier, “The grammaticalization of tenses and lexical
aspect – the case of German and French perfects” (241-272), traces the
development of perfect constructions in French and German as related to
lexical aspect. While previous work has discussed the grammaticalization of
French and German perfects, the unique contribution of this paper is that it
explicitly compares the grammaticalization pathways of the perfect in these
two languages. The semantic grammaticalization of the perfect proceeded in
broadly the same way in the two languages: An adjectival construction with
‘have’ or ‘be’ developed a resultative function, which in turn developed an
anterior usage. In the final stage it developed a temporal function as a past
tense marker. In the first stage, the adjectival construction was restricted
to ‘transformative’ or change-of-state verbs, a subcategory of Vendler’s
(1957) category of accomplishments. As the construction developed resultative
and anterior functions, the lexical restrictions loosened and verbs with other
lexical aspects began to be used. The process is complete with the past tense
usage, which can occur with verbs of all lexical aspects. Formal
grammaticalization of this construction in both French and German involved a
loss of agreement on the participle: object agreement with ‘have’
constructions and subject agreement with ‘be’ constructions. Another
grammaticalization process is semantic bleaching of ‘have’ and ‘be’, where the
distinction between transitive and intransitive is lost and becomes lexically
specified allomorphy; in some cases, one of the two morphemes is lost.
Rebotier concludes that the French perfect is semantically more
grammaticalized than the German perfect, but formally less so. However, the
development of each construction proceeded in the same direction as predicted
in FDG. 

The final chapter in the volume, “The grammaticalization of Dutch moeten:
modal and post-modal meanings” by Hella Olbertz and Wim Honselaar (pp
273-300), discusses semantic changes in the Dutch modal auxiliary <moeten>.
Unlike most other Germanic languages that have multiple modals, this is the
only modal in Dutch. This marker is highly polysemous and is used to express
various epistemic and deontic modalities. The authors develop a semantic
taxonomy of the modal distinctions expressed by <moeten> that combines
Narrog’s (2005) volitive vs. non-volitive modality and a modified version of
Hengeveld’s (2004) distinction involving participant, event, episode, and
proposition. This yields an eight-way distinction that can be mapped onto the
layered hierarchical levels of FDG. The authors then trace the semantic
development of <moeten> from its earliest documented attestations where it
indicated participant-oriented possibility. An additional sense indicating
event-oriented possibility developed, followed by a sense indicating deontic
necessity. <moeten> also developed the possibility of occurring independently
of another verb, with the sense ‘must go’. The authors argue against a
proposal by Nuyts (2013) that this represents a case of degrammaticalization,
stating that it is better viewed as a case of lexicalization. Another
relatively recent development is the use of <moeten> in an immediate
imperative with perception verbs. The authors end the chapter by showing how
the semantic developments of <moeten> follow the predictions of FDG in that
each change involved an increase in scope. 

EVALUATION

The chapters in this volume bring together the functionally-oriented
literature on TAME (Comrie 1976, 1985; Dahl 1985; Palmer 2001; Narrog 2005;
inter alia) with the literature on grammaticalization (Heine & Kuteva 2002;
Hopper & Traugott 2003; Heine & Narrog 2011; inter alia). The landmark study
on grammaticalization of TAME is Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca (1994), which is
referenced frequently throughout the book. The book contains important
insights that are sure to move forward our understanding of the
grammaticalization of TAME.

Three rather minor deficiencies in this volume present themselves. First, the
emphasis on FDG is somewhat unexpected. Given the research context in which
this book is situated, as well as the title and introduction that situate the
book as a functionally oriented volume on the grammaticalization of TAME, the
reader is not prepared for extensive studies of FDG unless, of course, one is
already acquainted with the work of individual scholars. The book title,
introduction, and summary on the back cover and the de Gruyter website would
more accurately reflect the books’ contents if they explicitly mentioned the
prominent place of FDG in many of the volume’s chapters. 

Second, a less obvious mismatch between the introduction and the main chapters
concerns the typological diversity of languages analyzed by the chapter
authors. The introduction argues for the importance of languages “of maximally
different types and affiliations” (5) in a functional approach, presenting
this volume as containing a typologically diverse sample of languages. The
language-specific studies are ordered with those most distant from Western
European first, and studies of Western European languages last. However, of
the nine languages represented in studies of individual languages, seven are
Indo-European. Of those, five are Germanic or Romance. The only
non-Indo-European languages represented are Javanese (Austronesian) and Tundra
Nenets (Uralic). Readers might be better served with an explicit statement
that the sampling is skewed toward well-studied languages and a suggestion
that further studies include a broader sampling of languages.

Third, a minor formatting addition to aid readers would be division of the
table of contents into two sections: section one containing the three general
studies and section two containing the language-specific studies. This would
make the contents more quickly accessible.

In spite of the rather minor limitations mentioned above, this volume contains
careful, high quality research by both leading and emerging scholars in the
field and provides an important contribution to the study of the
grammaticalization of TAME. It is important reading for scholars working on
grammaticalization or on TAME, as well as those interested in the framework of
FDG. Studies of individual languages are likely to be of interest to areal and
language family specialists, especially those whose research focuses on the
historical development of the language(s) in question.

REFERENCES

Bybee, Joan L., Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of
grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Comrie, Bernard. 1985. Tense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Davari, Shadi & Mehrdad Naghzguy Kohan. Forthcoming. The emergence of
auxiliaries in Persian.

Errington, J. Joseph. 1998. Shifting languages: Interaction and identity in
Javanese Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Evans, Nicholas. 2007. Insubordination and its uses. In Irina Nikolaeva (ed.),
Finiteness, 366–431. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. Why is grammaticalization irreversible? Linguistics
37(6). 1043–1068.

Heine, Bernd. 2002. On the role of context in grammaticalization. In Ilse
Wischer & Gabriele Diewald (eds.), New reflections on grammaticalization,
83–101. (Typological Studies in Language 49). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva. 2002. World lexicon of grammaticalization.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heine, Bernd & Heiko Narrog (eds.). 2011. The Oxford handbook of
grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hengeveld, Kees. 2004. Illocution, mode and modality. In Geert Booij,
Christian Lehmann & Joachim Mugdan (eds.), Morphology: a handbook on
inflection and word formation II, 1190-1202. Berlin & New York: Mouton de
Gruyter. 

Hengeveld, Kees. 2011. The grammaticalization of tense and aspect. In Bernd
Heine & Heiko Narrog (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization,
580–594. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hengeveld, Kees & J. Lachlan Mackenzie. 2008. Functional Discourse Grammar: A
typologically-based theory of language structure. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. 2nd ed.
(Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Matras, Yaron. 2007. The borrowability of structural categories. In Yaron
Matras & Jeanette Sakel (eds.), Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic
perspective, 31–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Narrog, Heiko. 2005. Modality, mood, and change of modal meanings: A new
perspective. Cognitive Linguistics 16(4). 677–731.

Narrog, Heiko. 2012. Modality, subjectivity, and semantic change: A
cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Norde, Muriel. 2009. Degrammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nuyts, Jan. 2013. De-auxiliarization without de-modalization in the Dutch core
modals: A case of collective degrammaticalization? Language Sciences 36.
124–133.

Palmer, F.R. 2001. Mood and modality. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Sakel, Jeanette. 2007. Types of loan: Matter and pattern. In Yaron Matras &
Jeanette Sakel (eds.), Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective,
15–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Vendler, Zeno. 1957. Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66(2). 143-160.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Brendon Yoder is a member of SIL International and a PhD candidate in
linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara. His research
focuses on documentation and description of Abawiri, a Papuan language of
Indonesia. Recent projects include collaboration with the community on an
orthography for community use, analysis of the tone system, and investigation
of grammatical relations and their connection to pragmatic structuring of
discourse. He is currently compiling a corpus of video-recorded texts with a
grant from the Endangered Language Fund. He has also conducted fieldwork on
phonetics and phonology in both Nias and Enggano, Austronesian languages of
Western Indonesia.

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