Grammaticalization of verdienen into an auxiliary marker of deontic modality

Abstract

This paper investigates synchronic variation in the lexical and grammatical environm ents of the German lexical verb verdienen 'earn', 'deserve'. In its lexical uses, verdienen co-occurs w ith an object noun phrase whose head is either concrete (e.g. Geld 'm oney') or, more commonly, abstract (e.g. Beachtung 'attention'). W hen it is used more grammatically w ith deontic m odal meaning, verdienen is followed by a passive or active infinitive. This paper uses collostructional analyses to contrast lexical and grammatical uses in terms of the m ost strongly attracted lexical items, w hich are grouped into semantic classes. The results reflect different degrees of host-class expansion (cf. Him m elm ann 2004), whereby the collexemes of verdienen expand from concrete to abstract and their morpho-syntactic contexts from nom inal to infinitival complement and subsequently from passive to active. Synchronic distribution can thus serve as a window on diachronic development (Kuteva 2001), in this case the rise of a deontic m odality marker.

Clause linkage and degrees of grammaticalization

“…any:PL:ACC precondition:PL:ACC hold:PRF:PST:PTCP to be:iNF:Aux:PASS 'The conference ought to /should be held without any pre-(DWDS CC20) conditions. ' Diewald, Dekalo & Czicza (2021) show that the verdienen-construction with the active infinitive is the most grammaticalized construction on the way towards a deontic modality marker. The authors suggest that the grammaticalization path of verdienen starts out from a transitive verb with a concrete direct object (cf.…”

“…These constructions with clausal complementation are expansions of the transitive construction of the verb verdienen as a lexical verb meaning 'earn' or 'deserve' . ( 3) and (4) show typical examples (Diewald, Dekalo & Czicza 2021). want:PRS:2pL he:NOM deserve:PRS:3sG still Respect:M:ACC 'You may say whatever you want, he still deserves respect.…”

“…want:PRS:2pL he:NOM deserve:PRS:3sG still Respect:M:ACC 'You may say whatever you want, he still deserves respect. ' Diewald, Dekalo & Czicza (2021) claim that the verb verdienen is undergoing a grammaticalization process which, starting out from the lexical meanings and constructions in (3) and ( 4), has developed a deontic modal construction like in (1a) and (ic) as well as in ( 5) and ( 6), whereby infinitival complements display active as well as passive infinitives.…”

“…This study is concerned with variants of verbal complementation of the German verb verdienen and their constructional characteristics in connection with their respective degrees of grammaticalization. The study takes up the results of Diewald, Dekalo & Czicza (2021) concerning the grammaticalization of verdienen & infinitival complement as a deontic construction and broadens the scenario by looking at the various types of sentential complementation found with verdienen. The patterns we are going to investigate are illustrated by the following sentences:…”

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This paper deals with different types of verbal complementation of the German verb verdienen. It focuses on constructions that have been undergoing a grammaticalization process and thus express deontic modality, as in Sie verdient geliebt zu werden ('She deserves to be loved') and Sie verdient zu leben ('She deserves to live') (Diewald, Dekalo & Czicza 2021). These constructions are connected to parallel complementation types with passive and active infinitives containing a correlate es, as in Sie verdient es, geliebt zu werden and Sie verdient es, zu leben, as well as finite clauses with the subordinator dass with and without correlative es, as in Sie verdient, dass sie geliebt wird and Sie verdient es, dass sie geliebt wird.

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