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Historical linguistics, Grammaticalization, Copulas

Abstract:

This paper focusses on the grammaticalization of become into a copula and beyond. Two frequently used criteria to identify an ongoing process of grammaticalization are semantic bleaching (Heine and Kuteva 2002:2) and syntactic context expansion (Himmelman 2004). Semantic bleaching is a function mainly of the quantity of a certain unit: the more frequent, the more eroded a unit is of its original content (Bybee 2003). Syntactic context expansion is qualitative in nature, and implies the increase of different syntactic collocates the grammaticalizing unit appears with. Typically, though not necessarily (as Hopper and Traugott 2003 note), these criteria are associated with an increase in type and token frequency of the collocates of the grammaticalizing item as long as the grammaticalization process is not finished, which is for instance the case in the grammaticalization of the going to-construction. The history of become raises questions to this typical idea one has of a grammaticalization process. First attestations show that become gradually developed out of a lexical sense ‘arrive’ (type illustrated in (1)) (where the function of become was already copular) into a change-of-state copula + AdjP (2) & NP (3), and then into a change-of-state auxiliary in a passive construction (4). (1) We becoman on smeðne feld & rumne. “We arrived at a smooth and spacious field.” (c900) (2) Hio swa þearl becom. (c970) “She became so strong.” (3) Ða Wyliscean kingas becoman his menn. (?c1120) “The Welsh kings became his men.” (4) The sayd obstynate parson shall become bounde. (c1560) From the qualitative perspective, this looks like a textbook grammaticalization example. The quantitative picture, however, is more challenging. On the basis of an extensive corpus-study, it is observed that between 1150 and 1420 both token and type-frequency of the spatial sense of become steadily decrease, and by 1420 this sense has disappeared. Simultaneously, type and token frequencies of the copular use increase. But after 1420, the frequencies of types (2) and (3) start to decrease too. Only after about 1560 the frequency of the copular use starts increasing again. It is also at this period that become extends to (4). On the basis of these observations, I argue that (i) the possibility of layering, the co-occurrence of original and grammatical uses (Hopper 1991), will decrease if the semantic distance between them is big enough and the grammatical use gets more and more entrenched – this tendency is cross-linguistically corroborated for locative verbs developing copular functions (Stassen 1997); (ii) the loss of the original spatial sense brings about a crisis in the development of become; (iii) if, however, the grammaticalizing unit is sufficiently productive and entrenched in its grammaticalized use when this crisis occurs, its grammaticalization process can get a second imputus. This has happened in the case of become, with concomitant new instances of syntactic context expansion (to (4)) and semantic bleaching, for instance the loss of the semantic component of gradual development originally associated with become. References Bybee, Joan. 2003. ‘Mechanisms of Change in Grammaticization’. In: Brian D. Joseph, Richard D. Janda. The handbook of historical linguistics. 602-623. Oxford: Blackwell. Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva. 2002. World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2004 ‘Lexicalization and grammaticization: opposite or orthogonal’. In: Björn Wiener, Walter Bisang and Nikolaus Himmelmann (eds.). What makes Grammaticalization? A Look from its Fringes and its Components (Series Title: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 158), 19-40. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hopper, Paul J. (1991). ‘On some principles of grammaticization’. In Elizabeth C. Traugott and Bernd Heine (eds.) Approaches to grammaticalization. Volume I: Focus on theoretical and methodological issues. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 17-35. Hopper, Paul J. and Elizabeth C. Traugott. 2003 [1993]. Grammaticalization. 2nd ed. (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stassen, Leon. 1997. Intransitive predication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.