Grammaticalization
Grammaticalization (also grammaticalization ) describes a process of language change in which a linguistic unit gradually loses its lexical meaning and is increasingly used as a morphosyntactic marker or ( synsemanticon ), i.e. H. is used as a pure function word. A typical example is the transition from verbs to auxiliary verbs , such as B. at engl. Verb to go when used to express an imminent event: We are going to leave. vs. We are going to London. or with the former verb will , which expressed an intention but has now become a marker of the future tense.
Grammaticalization as a linguistic universal
The grammaticalization of verbs of movement to express the future can be found in many languages of the world without them being related to one another or ever having been in contact with one another. Therefore, it may be a universal phenomenon, possibly related to the nature of human cognition . The investigation of universal development tendencies in grammaticalization and the uncovering of typical so-called grammaticalization paths (e.g. movement verb → future tense), which could therefore be linguistic universals , led to attempts to postulate general theories of grammaticalization. The theory of grammaticalization - that is, the systematic preoccupation with the universal character of grammaticalization - is an important branch of the language typology .
Mechanisms of grammaticalization
On the way to grammaticalization, various mechanisms act on a linguistic unit, the consequences of which cannot be reversed. It is said that grammaticalization is one-way. These four mechanisms are also referred to as the “four main phases of grammaticalization” (Heine / Kuteva 2002, p. 2).
Desemantization
Grammaticalization begins with the loss of the lexical content of the grammaticalized unit ( desemantization ): the English auxiliary verb to go in the going-to-future has dropped the meaning 'to go'. This can be explained with the concept that meanings are made up of different semen (meaning components). If the verb "to go" contains a sem for (further) movement and a sem for the reference to spatiality (among others), the latter is unnecessary or even disruptive for the expression of the grammatical category tense and is abandoned for the future tense meaning. The sem for (further) movement allows the use as a component of the future tense formation if the spatial semen is omitted.
Extension
Due to the loss of a lexical meaning, restrictions on the use of the grammatical unit also disappear, so that it can be used in broader contexts ( extension ), often together with the opposite of the original meaning.
- Come here (to me) and do that > Come and do that > Come on, do that > Come on, go
- French Il ne va pas 'He doesn't take a step'> 'He doesn't go'. Today this two-part negation formation ne ... pas can be combined with all verbs.
Decategorization
In their new function, the grammatical units no longer need some of the original properties and break them down.
- The units lose their ability to flexion , the derivation or modifiers to eat.
- The status of free form and syntactic freedom of movement can be lost. The unity becomes increasingly dependent on other forms, a development into a clitic or an affix becomes possible.
- The unity can no longer be referred to anaphorically and
- The unit loses previous members in its “ paradigm of origin ” or changes from an open class (nouns) to a closed one (grammatical functional words).
All these properties are not always lost; sometimes it makes perfect sense to retain them. A newly created English or German auxiliary can still be inflected. Or the process of decategorization is still ongoing and some properties are still preserved.
erosion
The loss of lexical content and frequent use often lead to a loss of phonetic mass, simplification or loss of accentuation. This loss is known as phonetic erosion . It can even lead to the complete loss of unity.
The grammaticalization scale
A unit that is being grammaticalized goes through various stages in the area of the grammar of a language. The further down the scale the unit is, the more grammatical it is.
Syntactization
At the beginning, a frequently occurring syntactic construction is reinterpreted ( reanalysis ). The desemantization starts and the extension changes the possibility of sentence rearrangement and / or additions.
- He's going to sleep ' He's going to sleep ' or ' He's going to sleep '
- He's slowly going to sleep ' He's slowly going to sleep '
- He's going to sleep deeply soon ' He's going to sleep deeply soon '
Extension: He's going to come
Morphologization
Morphologization can be split into two sub-processes: clitization and fusion . During the clitization, the unit that has been reduced in sound becomes a clitic due to the increase in frequency . Initially, there is no difference in meaning between the clitized and the separated form.
- What do you do? = What are you doing?
- I'm going up on the roof = I'm going up on the roof
However, different meanings can develop over time.
- I go to the school vs. I go to school
Through the process of fusion, a separation of the grammatical unit (the clitic) becomes impossible, at the end of which it is an affix . For example, one assumes that the suffix -te to express the past in German originated from a connection of a verb with the auxiliary verb to do ( anoint-tat, anoint-tat, anoint-te ). The -te suffix can no longer be separated.
Demorphemization
Units that have reached the status of an affix can evoke phonetic assimilations such as umlaut . The information of the grammatical unit is integrated into the root of another unit. If the suffix disappears due to erosion, the information is no longer expressed by a single morpheme , a demorphemization has taken place (e.g. mother - mother ).
Shrinkage
If the erosion goes so far that the grammatical unit no longer exists, one speaks of shrinkage . In this case, there is a high probability that a new unit for expressing the information will be grammaticalized and the grammaticalization will begin again.
Borderline cases
Since language is constantly changing and grammaticalization takes place step by step, there are many cases in which it is difficult to decide whether an element is already "grammatical" or still "lexical" because the reanalysis is in full swing. This is the case with the so-called passive recipient in German.
-
He gets the car from me
- = I'll lend him the car or
- = He gets the car from me in the borrowed state (on loan)
The fact that such “pending” cases cannot be formally decided calls into question the correctness of the theoretical assumptions of the concept of grammaticalization. Lexical = productive-open and grammatical = closed-conventionalized are polar opposites. With them alone one can only grasp a language change that has already been completed.
The above case can only be decided by resorting to the metalinguistic awareness of the speakers of a language, who can use it to assess whether such a construction is "perceived" as still metaphorically alive or as already formally frozen.
Degrammaticalization
Although grammaticalization is a major trend in modern languages, there are also counterexamples. From Degrammatikalisierung is when function words semantically charged and become independent by z. B. be used as verbs ( to up the bid = to increase the bid).
Development example: The German perfect of tomorrow
By extrapolating current language developments, which show typical stages of a grammaticalization, one can predict future morphological forms. The future may or may not produce these forms because unexpected developments can take place; Forecasts are always uncertain here.
Example of a grammaticalization
As an example, a further development of today's German perfect , in which the typical grammaticalization steps take place, is given here - as I said, only possible :
Starting point: Desemantized auxiliary verbs being and having
The perfect of the German contemporary language is formed with the desemantized grammatical formulas to be and have , that is, whose lexical meaning is restricted as auxiliary verbs
- "I have been "
- "I found "
The German perfect has many functions and so occurs frequently, also in subordinate clauses:
- "... because I have been"
- "... because I found"
1st phase: clitization
Because of the constantly used connection lexeme + formator in this order, the formator auxiliary verb (we take here have ) is phonologically weakened and clitized for linguistic reasons , the ending -en of the participle is deleted ("swallowed"):
- "Because I found (s) - have (e) "
2nd phase: Development to the suffix
The connection between the lexeme and the enclitic becomes stronger and stronger, the initial sound h of the auxiliary verb is deleted ("de-aspiratization") and the formator thereby loses its status as a free lexeme:
- "Because I found- (h) off "
An enclitonic becomes a suffix , a flexive for the grammatical morpheme 1st person singular indicative perfect active . So there is a resynthesis taking place.
| German find | find new | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person Sing. | I've found | found- (h) from |
| 2nd person Sing. | you have found | found- (h) ast |
| 3rd person Sing. | he found | found- (h) at |
| 1st person Pl. | we have found | have found- (h) amen < |
| 2nd person Pl. | you found | found- (h) dept |
| 3rd person Pl. | they have found | found- (h) a (be) n <have |
As can be seen here and in the following, we assume that the 1st and 3rd person plural, which use the same auxiliary verb form in today's German (“we have”, “they have”) nevertheless develop a different form (“-amen”, “ -on").
3rd phase: Extension
A semantic extension (or analogy ) now takes place . Verbs that previously could only form the perfect with sein also take on the developed ending:
- "I have been " = I have been
The forms created in the inverted subordinate clause also prevail in the main clause. Let us further assume that paradigmatic compensation prevails (here by reducing the ablaze and regularization). Because the new endings differ depending on the person and the forms are distinguishable, the personal pronouns as markers of person and number are unnecessary, a pro-drop language is developing for linguistic reasons . The following paradigm is obtained:
| German find | find new | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person Sing. | I've found | gefindab |
| 2nd person Sing. | you have found | found |
| 3rd person Sing. | he found | found |
| 1st person Pl. | we have found | found |
| 2nd person Pl. | you found | found |
| 3rd person Pl. | they have found | found |
| German to be | new his | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person Sing. | I have been | gewesab |
| 2nd person Sing. | You were | has been |
| 3rd person Sing. | he has been | Gewesat |
| 1st person Pl. | we have been | been |
| 2nd person Pl. | you have been | gewesabt |
| 3rd person Pl. | they have been | gewesab |
Other ways of developing the example
The example given is one of many possibilities for development. The ablaut can be preserved. Or it remains from the auxiliary verb haben as from the auxiliary verb have received, they develop into allomorphs , etc.
literature
- Gabriele Diewald : Grammaticalization: An introduction to being and becoming grammatical forms (= Germanistic workbooks. Volume 36). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-484-25136-0 .
- Heiko Girnth: Studies on the theory of grammaticalization using the example of West Central German. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-484-31223-8 ( German language linguistics series 223), (also: Mainz, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1999)
- Haspelmath Martin : Why is Grammaticalization Irreversible? In: Linguistics. 37, 6, 1999, ISSN 0024-3949 , pp. 1043-1068, online (PDF; 161 KB) .
- Bernd Heine , Reh Mechthild: Grammaticalization and Reanalysis in African Languages. Buske, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-87118-630-9 .
- Bernd Heine: Grammaticalization. In: Brian D. Joseph, Richard D. Janda (Eds.) The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Blackwell, Malden MA et al. 2003, ISBN 0-631-19571-8 , pp. 575-601 ( Blackwell handbooks in linguistics ).
- Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva: World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2002, ISBN 0-521-80339-X .
- Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva: The Genesis of Grammar. A reconstruction. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-922777-8 ( Studies in the evolution of language 9 = Oxford linguistics ).
- Bernd Heine, Ulrike Claudi, Friederike Hünnemeyer: Grammaticalization. A conceptual framework. University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL et al. 1991, ISBN 0-226-32515-6
- Paul J. Hopper, Elizabeth Closs Traugott: Grammaticalization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1993, ISBN 0-521-36655-0 ( Cambridge textbooks in linguistics ).
- Christian Lehmann : Thoughts on Grammaticalization. Revised and expanded version. LINCOM Europe, Munich (recte: Unterschleissheim) et al. 1995, ISBN 3-929075-50-4 ( LINCOM studies in theoretical linguistics 1).
- Alexandra N. Lenz: On the grammaticalization of "giving" in German and Letzebuergeschen. In: Journal for German Linguistics. 35, 1/2, 2007, ISSN 0301-3294 , pp. 52-82.
- Alexandra N. Lenz: “When someone is given something.” Results of a language production experiment on the passive recipient. In: Franz Patocka, Guido Seiler (Hrsg.): Dialektale Morphologie, dialektale Syntax. Contributions to the 2nd Congress of the International Society for Dialectology of German, Vienna, 20. – 23. September 2006. Edition Present, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-7069-0403-2 , pp. 155–178.
- Antoine Meillet : L'évolution des formes grammaticales. in: Scientia (Rivista di Scienza) 12, No. 26, 6, 1912, ISSN 0036-8687 , pp. 384-400 (reprinted in: A. Meillet: Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Volume 1. Champion, Paris 1948, pp. 130-148 ( Collection linguistique 8)).
- Robert Mroczynski: Grammaticalization and Pragmaticization. To develop the discourse markers “where”, “because” and “yes” in spoken German. Stauffenburg Verlag, Tübingen 2012.
- Renata Szczepaniak: Grammaticalization in German. An introduction. 2nd edition, Narr-Verlag, Tübingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8233-6666-9 .
