Henares deficiente bueno peor que bueno

One of the most-cited cases of degrammaticalization concerns a shift from modal verb to lexical verb. Examples that have been suggested are English dare and need (Beths 1999; Taeymans 2004), Swedish ma˚ ‘may’> ‘feel’ (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998), and Danish turde ‘dare’ (Andersen 2008). In none of these cases, however, is the evidence conclusive.

With the exception of Swedish ma˚, none of the above-mentioned verbs changes semantically. Therefore, some authors (e.g. Taeymans 2004) have chosen to use the term ‘semi-modal’ to refer to the (formally) less gramma- ticalized variant. The changes that can be observed are purely formal: show- ing regular verb morphology (see example (2)), having non-Wnite forms (example (3)), as well as the possibility of selecting to-inWnitives (also in example (2)), and (in the case of English) auxiliary do-support (see example (4); Taeymans 2004: 100V.).

(2) a. Somebody needs to be a contact for getting all the information to by a given date.

b. No one dared to say anything. (3) a. Why do I need to practice that . . . ?

b. He shivered, not daring to move in case they noticed and dragged him out.

(4) a. You do not need to be very rich. b. Don’t you dare come over smoking!

In my brief discussion of dare in section 3.4, we have already seen that the history of dare is most appropriately analysed as a case of retraction – although main verb usage is becoming increasingly common at the expense of modal verb usage, dare had in fact never become entirely obsolete as a main verb. As a consequence, we cannot conclude that the main verb usage developed out of the modal usage, and hence this is not a case of degrammaticalization. In her corpus-based study of dare and need in spoken and written British present-day English, Taeymans arrives at a similar conclusion. As to dare, Taeymans’s frequency analysis suggests that the use of dare as a modal verb is increasing, but she also notes that modal dare has become very rare in American English, which is generally considered less conservative than British English. Taeymans (2004: 111) therefore concludes that dare ‘is not evidently moving in a clearly identiWable direction’. In the case of need (Taeymans 2004: 108), the formal development is counterdirectional, because need has acquired morphosyntac- tic characteristics of a main verb. On the semantic side, however, semi-modal

need has shifted from ‘internal’ to ‘external’ necessity, which is a kind of change typically associated with grammaticalization. It is therefore not an example of degrammation as deWned in (1).

A comparable case is Danish turde ‘dare’ (Andersen 2008), which can occur both with an at-inWnitive and a ‘bare’ inWnitive:

(5) a. Jeg tør ikke at spørge ham I dare not to ask him b. Jeg tør ikke spørge ham

I dare not ask him

Here the evidence does seem to suggest that the occurrence of inWnitival markers is a fairly recent development. It was probably Wrst noted by Hansen in 1977 (Davidsen-Nielsen 1990: 37), but the at-inWnitive is still not generally accepted in reference grammars (cf. e.g. Zola Christensen and Christensen 2005: 116; Jacobsen and Jørgensen 2005: 89). But apart from the use of the inWnitival marker, nothing has changed – there is no change in either meaning or inXection.

A change which has been claimed to involve both formal and semantic change is Swedish ma˚ (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998; van der Auwera 2002; Andersson 2007). This verb can indeed be used in two diVerent senses, exempliWed in (6) and (7). Modal ma˚ ‘may’ is not inXected in the present tense ((6a)), and has an irregular past tense ma˚tte ((6b)), which is rather formal/archaic and can be used, among other things, as an epistemic modal. Because of the semantic discrepancy between the present and the past tense, ma˚tte is sometimes classiWed as a separate modal verb (Teleman, Hellberg, and Andersson 1999a: 573). As a main verb meaning ‘feel’, exem- pliWed in (7), ma˚ has regular verb inXection.

(6) a. Hon ma˚ inte vara va¨rldens ba¨sta sa˚ngerska She may not be the world’s best singer ‘She may not be the best singer in the world’

b. Hon ma˚tte vara lyckligt gift She must be happily married (7) a. Jag ma˚r bra idag

I feel well today b. Jag ma˚dde inte bra iga˚r

I felt not well yesterday ‘Yesterday, I did not feel well’

Van der Auwera and Plungian (1998: 105), and van der Auwera (2002: 24) suggest a split in the history of ma˚, when the original auxiliary meaning was continued and a new verb with regular inXection was developed. But in his detailed diachronic study of Swedish ma˚, Andersson (2007) has shown that the sense of ‘feel’ dates back to the oldest Swedish texts available, and that both modal ma˚ and lexical ma˚ can be traced back to an earlier lexical verb magha ‘to be strong, powerful’ (Andersson 2007: 65). Two examples of magha as a lexical verb are given below:

(8) a. Jak hugdhe thik wara vældogastan hærra I imagined you to.be most.powerful-acc man-acc

nu Wndar iak at christus ma mer æn thu now Wnd I that Christ can more than you

‘I thought you were the most powerful man. Now I think that Christ has more powers than you’

b. . . . sende faustianius budh til athenas At wita . . . sent Faustianius messenger to Athens to learn wm sina hustru Ok syni huru the mattu about his-acc wife-acc and sons-acc how they felt ‘Faustianius sent a messenger to Athens to find out how his wife and sons were doing’2

In the above examples, the Old Swedish main verb ma has the same (irregular) inflection as modal ma, with lack of -r in the third person of the present indicative, and a preterite stem matt-. Interestingly, the formal split-off of ma˚ occurs much later – present tense ma˚r is not attested before the second half of the sixteenth century, and preterite ma˚dde not before the beginning of the seventeenth century (Andersson 2007: 191). Lexical ma˚ joined a new conjugation of monosyllabic verbs ending in a vowel. The change may thus very well be motivated by analogy (after such verbs as na˚ ‘to reach’ or spa˚ ‘prophesize’), and Andersson (ibid.) correctly concludes that the divergence of lexical ma˚ and modal ma˚ as a result of morphological change alone is insufficient to qualify as a case of degrammaticalization.

A genuine example of degrammation of a modal verb is the development of the full verb wotte ‘to wish’ from the preterite subjunctive of modal welle ‘to want to’ in a variety of Pennsylvania German spoken in Waterloo County, Canada (Burridge 1995, 1998).

2 _{Both examples are from the Codex Bildstenianus manuscript (c. 1350) of the Old Swedish book of} legends, which were Wrst written down towards the end of the thirteenth century.

Pennsylvania German has seven modal verbs: misse ‘to have to, must’, selle ‘to be supposed to, to be to’, kenne ‘to be able to, can’, welle, ‘to want to’, daerfe ‘to be allowed to’, maage ‘to like to, may’ (now rare), and brauche ‘to need to’. As a result of the decreasing productivity of the subjunctive mood in Pennsylvania German,3 the original preterite subjunctive forms of these verbs have established themselves as separate modal verbs, ‘in ways that are reminiscent of the developing independence of the originally preterite forms would, could, should, and might in English’ (Burridge 1998: 25). This lexical split between the present indicative and the preterite subjunctive was facili- tated by three factors that determine the likelihood of such a dissociation (Bybee 1985b: 88ff.): semantic distance, phonological distance, and frequency. The semantic relationship between the present indicative and the preterite subjunctive has become increasingly opaque, especially since the modals were among the handful of verbs retaining synthetic forms. Phonologically, they became more divergent than they already were (being irregular verbs), for example when sollt-/so¨llt- and wollt/wo¨llt- became sett- and wett-. And the high discourse frequency of the preterite subjunctive forms may have promoted their increasing autonomy. The lexical split is exemplified by constructions such as (9a–b) (quite commonly used by younger speakers), where instead of the expected infinitive (as in (9c)), preterite subjunctive forms are found.

(9) a. Er hett nach4 Mt Forest geh sette He had to Mt Forest go should

‘He ought to have gone to Mt Forest (but he didn’t)’ b. Er hot nach Mt Forest geh sette

He has to Mt Forest go should

‘He ought to have gone to Mt Forest (but he didn’t)’ c. Er hett nach Mt Forest geh solle

He had to Mt Forest go should

‘He ought to have gone to Mt Forest (but he didn’t)’

3 _{In present-day Pennsylvania German the subjunctive is primarily expressed by the subjunctive} forms of the modal due ‘to do’þinWnitive, but some synthetic forms have been retained, varying from dialect to dialect. Indeed there are varieties (Amish and Mennonite) where both the Wnite verb and the modal inWnitive are marked for the subjunctive, as in ich hett gehe missde ‘I would have had to go’, where -d- in missde marks the subjunctive (which is quite uncommon for inWnitives; Mark Louden, p.c.).

This strongly suggests that these verbs are in the process of becoming separate modal verbs. But Waterloo County Pennsylvania German witnessed a second split: the preterite subjunctive form wotte (retaining the earlier rounded vowel) is now distinct from both welle ‘to want to’ and wette ‘would’. At present, wotte is rapidly establishing itself as an autonomous verb with full lexical meaning ‘to wish, desire’, thus becoming synonymous with the verb winsche ‘to wish’.5In its shift from a modal verb to a lexical verb, wotte gained a number of morphosyntactic properties, exemplified in (10) (Burridge 1998: 28f.). Thus, it can no longer take infinitival complements ((10a)), it can be nominalized, as in (10b), it has acquired verbal inflections such as the imperative in (10c), or a participle as in (10d), and it can itself be the complement of a modal auxiliary, as in (10e), or auxiliary do as in (10f). (10) a. *Ich wott kumme

I want come ‘I want to come’

b. Er ist juscht am wotte, er kennt noch eens He is just at.the wishing, he could again one vun die Ebbel hawwe

of the apples have

‘He is just wishing he could have one more of the apples’ c. Wott net fer sell

Wish not for that ‘Don’t wish for that’

d. Er hat gewott er kennt noch eens vun die He has wished he could again one of the Ebbel hawwe

apples have

‘He wished he could have one more of the apples’

e. Ich muss wotte er brauch net lang Schmaetze hawwe I must wish he need not long pain have ‘I do wish, he didn’t need to be in pain for long’

f. Er dut als wotte, er kennt noch eens vun He does always wish, he could again one of die Ebbel hawwe

the apples have

‘He is always wishing he could have one more of the apples’

5 _{The verb winsche has not disappeared entirely – it survives in a subjunctive form, and both} Ich wott, er kennt mitkumme and Ich winscht, er kennt mitkumme (both meaning ‘I wish he could come with us’) are possible in present-day Pennsylvania German (Mark Louden, p.c.).

It is not uncommon per se for the past subjunctive of certain modal verbs to be used in modest expressions of volition, as in the German example below, involving the modal mo¨gen ‘may’:

(11) Ich mo¨chte, dass er mal aufho¨rt I may-past.subj that he once stops ‘I wished he would just stop doing that’

What is special about Pennsylvania German wotte is, however, that this sub- junctive modal went on to develop into a lexical verb, something which Stand- ard German mo¨chte did not do. According to Burridge, the explanation for this remarkable development has to be sought in extralinguistic factors. She points out that Pennsylvania German speakers, in particular the Old Order Mennonites which formed the focus of Burridge’s studies, are a deeply religious people, whose self-will and self-love is entirely subordinated to the will of God:

Speakers are quite clearly uncomfortable with blunt expressions of desire or will. It is hardly surprising then that the usual German verb of ‘wishing’ and ‘desiring’ winsche has all but disappeared from this language. The use of the past subjunctive has always had a range of diVerent tentative or remote applications in Germanic. Its element of Table 4.1. Parameter analysis of Pennsylvania German wotte

Parameter Primitive change(s)

Integrity resemanticization:þ; there has been a shift from grammat- ical (modal) meaning (‘would’) to full lexical meaning (‘to wish’).

phonological ‘strengthening’:&; there is no change in the verb stem at the phonological level.

recategorialization:þ; lexical wotte has acquired regular verb morphology.

Paradigmaticity deparadigmaticization:þ; wotte has shifted from a minor word class (modal verbs) to a major word class (lexical verbs).

Paradigmatic variability

deobligatoriWcation: þ; the selection of wotte as a full verb meaning ‘to wish’ depends on the lexical context, not on the syntactic construction (as was the case with modal preterite subjunctive wotte, which was obligatory in modal con- structions).

Structural scope scope expansion:þ; modal verbs only take scope over a VP, but lexical wotte may take clausal complements, as in some of the examples above.

Bondedness not relevant in primary degrammaticalization. Syntagmatic

variability

Xexibilization: þ; as a full verb, wotte can appear in more construction types (both Wnite and inWnite).

unreality means it can oVer a more indirect, a more cautious, a more modest, a more polite, even a more objective mode of expression than the more pedestrian indicative. (Burridge 1998: 32)

A second example which might be a case of degrammation is Chinese de˘i/de´ (Ziegeler 2004). In Old Chinese (500 bc – ad 200), this was a lexical verb meaning ‘to obtain’, as in (12):

(12) e´r de´ tia¯nxia` and obtain world ‘and have the kingdom’

The object of the verb could be either physical or abstract. In addition, de´ could be used as a preverbal modal of permission in negative or rhetorical contexts (example (13), which can be seen as an extension from ‘to obtain an object (NP)’ to ‘to obtain an act (V)’ (Ziegeler 2004: 122). The permissive usage, in turn, gave rise to a deontic usage of de´ (ibid.: 123f.), and in Modern Chinese, deontic obligation is still the main modal meaning of de˘i (example (14)). (13) z *ıkua`i bu de´ yu˘ re´n ya`n

Zi Kuai neg permit give other Yan

‘Zi Kuai is not permitted to give other(s) the state of Yan!’ (14) ha´i de˘i chı¯ ro`u

still should eat meat ‘(One) still has to eat meat’

Thus far, the development of de´/de˘i appears to be a regular case of gramma- ticalization. In present-day Chinese, however, de˘i developed a new, lexical meaning ‘need, take, require’. It can be used in two contexts: preceding a numeral classiWer (example (15a)), or preceding a noun clause (example (15b)) (Ziegeler 2004: 124):

(15) a. zhe` ge go¯ngzuo` de˘i sa¯n ge re´n this cl work needs three cl people ‘this work needs three people’

b. bie´ re´n qu` bu` xı´ng de˘i n *ı qı¯nzı` qu` other people go not ok need you in-person go ‘It’s not ok for other people to go, it requires that you go in person’ That the new lexical verb developed from the modal and not from the original lexical verb meaning ‘to obtain’ is evidenced by its phonological form: the modal and the verb meaning ‘need’ are both de˘i, whereas the original verb ‘to obtain’ has retained the form de´ (ibid.: 125).