failed grammaticalisation of a phrase signifying “(n)ever” eric hoekstra & bouke slofstra
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Failed grammaticalisation of a phrase signifying “(n)ever” Eric Hoekstra & Bouke Slofstra. Current Trends in Grammaticalization Research 2009. The data. Investigate the rise and fall of the phrase syn leven his life => ‘ever’ syn leven net his life not => ‘never’ - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Failed grammaticalisation of a phrase signifying “(n)ever”
Eric Hoekstra & Bouke Slofstra
Current Trends in Grammaticalization Research 2009
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The data
• Investigate the rise and fall of the phrase syn levenhis life => ‘ever’
syn leven net
his life not => ‘never’
• Data from 17-18th century Frisian (Middle Frisian).
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The theoretical question
• Why didn’t this phrase grammaticalise?
• Why did it lose out against its rivals oait / noait ‘ever/never’.
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Language Corpus Middle Frisian
• Around 1 million of words• Tagged for all types of agreement • Lemmatised• Exhaustive• Beta-version internally available • Freely available through www as of 2010• Presentation at Euralex 2010, Leeuwarden
http://www.euralex.nl/
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Three competitors meaning ‘ever / never’ in 17-18th century Frisian
• Ea / Nea
• Oait / Noait
• Syn leven / Syn leven nethis life / his life not‘ever / never’
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Ea / Nea
• Derives from Old Frisian a / na.
• Last attested 1702 (ea), 1718 (nea).
• Basically absent in 18th century.
• Found again from 1830 onwards.
• Brought back to life by the Frisian Language movement
• Nowadays still written, sometimes heard, called boekjefrysk ‘Frisian from a book’.
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Oait / Noait
• Homophonous to Dutch ooit / nooit
• Borrowed from Dutch
• First attested 1702 (oait), 1672 (noait)
• Dutch ooit / nooit has ousted older Dutch ie / nie, the cognates of Frisian ea / nea
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Dutch ooit / nooit ousts Frisian ea/nea:
(N)EA roughly 17th century
(N)OAIT roughly 18th century
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Syn leven / Syn leven net
It comes in two forms.
Dutch form:Syn leven / Syn leven netHis life / His life not ‘ever/never’
Frisian form:Syn libben / Syn libben net
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Syn leven (net) is a loan from Dutch
Argument 1 is phonological: intervocalic /v/ does not occur in native MF words after a mid or a high vowel
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Syn leven (net) is a loan from Dutch (argument 2)
• Argument 2syn leven (net) first attested 1614syn libben (net) first attested 1675
• So the Frisian form is a relexification of the Dutch form, testifying to some language vitality.
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Syn leven (net) is a loan from Dutch (argument 3)
• Outside the construction syn leven (net), the word leven doesn’t occur.
• Outside the construction syn libben (net), the word libben occurs + 400 times.
• => The word leven was not borrowed. Only the construction syn leven (net) as a whole was, in the meaning ‘(n)ever’.
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Overview of syntactic environments under investigation
• Rhetorical questions• Comparative relative ‘so ... like...’.• Exclamative• Clauses with a clausal negation• In the scope of a negative DP such as nobody• In the scope of an excluding head such as if,
before, deny.• Relative clauses (free relative clauses)
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Rhetorical questions
Wa het sijn libben herd fen socke bottewho has his life heard of such terribledingen (1711)things
‘Who ever heard of such terrible things?’
Frequency leven + libben: (4+12) = 16
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Comparative relative ‘so/such ... as...’
It is zok maol praat az ik mijn leven it is such crazy talk as I my lifeheard hab! (1779)heard have‘It’s such crazy talk as I never heard in my life.’Frequency leven + libben: (2+1) = 3NB Weak context for NPI
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Exclamative (idiomatic)
Nou hab ik mijn leven! … hoe bijtinke now have I my life … how think dij Minschen 't! (1779)those people (of) it‘Well upon my life! … How do those people come to think of it!’
Frequency leven + libben: (2+0) = 2Why is the Dutch form leven used here?
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Exclamative features the Dutch form. Why?
• In the source (a play), rethorical uses feature Frisianised ‘libben’.
• => Why is ‘leven’ re-borrowed from Dutch?
• => Because it a new syntactic context, and it is a different, more abstract semantic use!
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Clause negation
ick hie t oors mijn leven I would-have it otherwise my lifeneat ljæuwd (1701)not believed‘Otherwise, I’d never have believed it.’
Frequency leven + libben: (19+15) = 34
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Zero in the following contexts
• In the scope of a negative DP such as nobodyEA 5:31 (total 36) OAIT 35:95 (130)
• In the scope of an excluding head such as if, before, deny.EA 10:26 OAIT 31:99
• Free / nominal relative clauses EA 14:22 OAIT 11:119
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In the scope of a negative DP
Joa zille nin fortriet Oyt syæn, (1755) they will no sadness ever see
=> No syn leven / libben is found in this context.
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In the scope of an excluding head such as if, before, deny, alas that.
Dat mij ien koegel reitse (1748)that me a bullet may-hiteiar ik ien slaaf ooit hiet before I a slave ever was-called
=> No syn leven / libben is found in this context.
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Free / nominal relative clauses
Joa trogzieke wis (1755) they search surely het hier ooyt trog toa sieken iswhat here ever through to search is
=> No syn leven / libben is found in this context.
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Zero-contexts for syn libben/leven
Syn leven /
libben
55
EA
36
OAIT
130
Scope of Neg. DP
0 5 35
Excluding Head
0 10 31
Free/nom-inal relative clauses
0 14 11
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Non zero-contexts for syn libben/leven
Syn leven /
libben
55
EA
36
OAIT
130
Rethorical Question
16 6 26
Comp Rel + Exclam
5 0 0
Clause Negation 34 0 27
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Question
Why didn’t syn leven / libben win out against ea and oait?
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(1) Syntactic reason
Syn leven / libben was restricted to three contexts. It could not be used with negative DPs, excluding heads and free / nominal relative clauses – which are good contexts to score a higher frequency.
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(2) Semantic reason
All examples with syn leven / libben have a very emphatic interpretation (high degree); as such they are found in rethorical questions, exclamatives and comparative relatives indicating a high degree.
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(3) Sociological reason
The expression seems to be associated with low class and spoken language. It is frequent in low comedy, it doesn’t occur in the translation of the psalms of Althuysen.
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(4) Another syntactic reason
Syn leven / libben has the structure of:
POSSESSOR + leven / libben
The possessor is in most examples coreferential with the subject (or topic?).
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(4) Another syntactic reason continued
Heste dijn libben zok foelbekjen wol heard?
Have-you your life such foulspeech ADV heard?
ick hie it mijn leven næt ljæud/
I would-have it my life net believed
The agreeing possessor blocks further grammaticalisation en lexicalisation of the phrase in to a word (majority of cases).
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Grammaticalisation in Sealter Frisian?
• Frisian language family:– North Frisian (near the Danish border)– (West) Frisian (The Netherlands)– East Frisian (near the Dutch border)
• Sealter Frisian only survivor of the East Frisian language, spoken by 2000 people in Sealterlân
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Frisian Language Family (map)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Friesetaalgebied.png)
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Grammaticalisation in Sealter Frisian?(continued)
Kramer (1970):silǻǻrge nit > *silarege > *siladege> sien Lääwdoage ‘his life days’
The possessor pronoun is fixed, so the phrase can be reanalysed as a word.
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Grammaticalisation in Sealter Frisian?(continued)
• The possessor pronoun is frozen, 3sg, regardless of the ‘antecedent’; hence the phrase can be grammaticalised.
• Native speakers consider silǻǻrge a word.• This confirms reason (4), that the
changing possessor pronoun blocked grammaticalisation in Frisian.
• Incidentally: OE aefre is perhaps derived from a word meaning ‘life’.
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To sum up
The phrase syn libben/leven net failed to grammaticalise in 17th and 18th century West-Frisian for a complex of syntactic, semantic and sociological reasons.
Thank you for your attention!
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Questions
Questions on any aspect of Frisian: