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Grammaticalization of the verb ‘to acquire’ into modality: A case study in Vietnamese

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Abstract

The verbs meaning ‘to acquire’ are known to be highly polyfunctional words in Southeast Asian languages. They have many syntactic functions and many grammatical meanings. One of the important grammatical meanings expressed by the verbs meaning ‘to acquire’ across languages is modality. This study aims to investigate the grammaticalization of the verb ‘to acquire’ in Vietnamese, namely, được, into a grammatical marker of many types of modality. It is found that được can indicate three types of modality, i.e. ability/capacity modality, circumstantial possibility, and permission. It has not developed into a fullfledged epistemic modal yet. It is argued that the grammaticalization of được into different types of modality is primarily driven by metonymic processes.

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... Investigating grammaticality of words and their syntactic functions is for long considered as one of the main destinations of both synchronic and diachronic syntax (Brinton, 1996, Hopper & Traugott, 2003, Trousdale, 2008, Thepkanjana & Ruangmanee, 2015. The importance of such studies lies in the assumption that grammaticalized words and their syntactic functions bring to us reliable clues of how languages are developing and how syntactic functions are carried out and represented in discourse (Hopper & Traugott, 2003, DeLancey, 2004, & Heine, 2006, among many others). ...
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