Category Change and Gradience in the Determiner System

Denison, David

doi:10.1002/9780470757048.ch12

Cited by 82 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…OE se is traditionally described as a demonstrative with near-article functions (McColl Millar, 2000;Traugott, 1992: 173). In Middle English, that and the become formally and functionally distinct elements: that has demonstrative semantics and the reduced form the is a dedicated marker of definiteness (amongst others McColl Millar, 2000;Denison, 2006).…”

Section: Case Study 1 Severalmentioning

confidence: 98%

Refining secondary grammaticalization by looking at subprocesses of change

Breban

2015

Language Sciences

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Section: Case Study 1 Severalmentioning

confidence: 98%

Refining secondary grammaticalization by looking at subprocesses of change

Breban

2015

Language Sciences

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“…The development of new unspecific quantifiers has been studied by Denison (2006) and Breban (2008. One of the best-developed descriptions, because the historical data present a clear path of development, is that of several.…”

Section: The Development Of Several (Breban 2008)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Accordingly, diachronic processes of lexicalization and grammaticalization have been associated with rightward and leftward movement in the NP respectively (Adamson 2000;Breban 2010 various, divers(e) and numerous come to function within the quantifier paradigm (Denison 2006(Denison , 2010Breban 2008Breban , 2010Breban , 2014. The processes underlying this diachronic shift nevertheless differ from adjective to adjective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multipleshifts

Breban

Gentens

2016

FOL

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In this paper we report on a historical corpus study of English multiple, an adjective which underwent a process of grammaticalization starting from lexical uses with the meaning 'composite', e.g. HR 3617 is a multiple star, to grammaticalized uses as individualizer, paraphrasable as 'different', e.g. She has to perform multiple tasks at the same time, and as quantifier 'several', e.g. I have multiple friends in high society. Multiple is just one of several adjectives going down this path of grammaticalization. However, as we show in this paper, the trajectory of each adjective includes different micro-processes of change. New diachronic case studies on the grammaticalization of individual items thus remain crucial to further advance our understanding of the potential environments and changes underlying grammaticalization processes. The case of multiple shows that, firstly, not only attributes, but also classifiers can serve as input for grammaticalization, and that, secondly, grammaticalization and lexicalization processes can have non-adjacent functions in the noun phrase as their input and output. IntroductionChanges in the English noun phrase (henceforth NP) have been a fruitful topic of study within Walk is the head noun, which presents the type of thing instantiated by the referent. The definite article the fulfils the function of determiner and specifies the identifiability of the referent. Other functions that are of significance for the present article are the three types of modifiers associated with

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“…Recent approaches to postdeterminer adjectives within a grammaticalization framework (Breban 2002;Adamson & González-Díaz 2004;Denison 2006) are beginning to shed new light on them by interpreting their properties in terms of generally recognized semantic and formal tendencies of grammaticalized items. Denison (2006: 298) describes the historical process by which the determiner-like use of several, meaning 'individually separate, different', developed from its original descriptive use, in which it meant 'existing apart, separate'.…”

Section: Postdeterminer Uses Of Adjectives and Grammaticalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, the adjectives lose the gradability and potential for predicative alternation associated with their lexical use, i.e. they manifest decategorialization (Hopper & Traugott 2003) or what Denison (2006) more positively characterizes as 'gradient category shift '. Breban (2006a) adduced two types of empirical evidence for this hypothesis.…”

Section: Postdeterminer Uses Of Adjectives and Grammaticalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deictification: the development of secondary deictic meanings by adjectives in the English NP

Davidse¹,

Breban²,

linden³

2008

English Language and Linguistics

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In this article we make a case for recognizing deictification as a type of grammaticalization and semantic shift in the NP analogous to auxiliarization in the VP. The specific analogy we point out is between lexical verbs that grammaticalize into secondary auxiliaries bound by the finite, as in is going to, has to + verb, and lexically full adjectives that grammaticalize into postdeterminers bound by the primary determiner, as in a different, the same + noun. We present five case studies of the development of postdeterminer meanings, based on the analysis of diachronic and synchronic data. The adjectives studied are opposite, complete, old, regular and necessary, whose postdeterminer uses relate to the basic deictic systems of space, quantity, time and modality. Our analysis of the data shows that the mechanism of secondary deictification can be given a unified characterization as the semantic shift by which a general relation expressed by the adjective is given a subjective reference point in or relative to the speech event.

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Category Change and Gradience in the Determiner System

Cited by 82 publications

References 21 publications

Refining secondary grammaticalization by looking at subprocesses of change

Refining secondary grammaticalization by looking at subprocesses of change

Multipleshifts

Deictification: the development of secondary deictic meanings by adjectives in the English NP

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