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Some reflections on semantic–pragmatic cycles
Abstract
This paper explores novel ways to consider semantic–pragmatic cycles using a dual strategy: an inwards strategy, whereby the distinctive traits of a pragmatic cycle are established, and an outwards strategy, whereby the categories that delimit semantic–pragmatic cycles are described. The result of this exploration is the distinction between “pragmatic cycle”, “replication”, “concomitance” and “paradigmatic increase” as four different yet related processes. In addition, this study integrates Construction Grammar into the description of each process and shows that the study of semantic–pragmatic cycles can benefit from a constructional approach, adopting Traugott and Trousdale’s (2013) and Traugott’s (2018) models, and including concepts from European structuralism, particularly the notions of “paradigm”, “diasystem” and “functional language” (“lengua funcional”).
... En trabajos previos examinamos el proceso de gramaticalización de igual como marcador epistémico (='a lo mejor'); averiguamos entonces que tal gramaticalización fue en realidad una réplica de la gramaticalización de lo mismo (Llopis, 2018;Pons y Llopis, 2020). Igual adquirió el significado nuevo de forma en cierto modo abrupta -sin apenas haber desarrollado contextos previos-, copió el significado nuevo de lo mismo, forma que sí experimentó un proceso evolutivo completo. ...
Este trabajo pretende explicar las rutas de gramaticalización de igual (y lo mismo) como marcador reformulador y concesivo basándose en un macrocorpus de textos diacrónico y sincrónico. Se plantea tres objetivos: averiguar la posible interrelación de las evoluciones de igual y lo mismo en estas funciones, indagar en qué contextos previos asumió estas funciones y en qué zona se originó. El estudio de corpus revela que las evoluciones de ambas formas están relacionadas, pero el cambio de preferencia formal (lo mismo > igual) originó que la gramaticalización de lo mismo como conector se truncara y la de igual prosperara. La exploración de los contextos previos refleja la ligazón entre los valores reformulador y concesivo. El proceso se desarrolló en la zona rioplatense y de ahí se propagó al interior de Argentina y al español chileno, donde se convirtió en una forma popular. Palabras clave: gramaticalización, reformulador de distanciamiento, concesivo, español americano
Resumen
El presente artículo analiza la evolución diacrónica de dos vocablos de tratamiento familiar de notable frecuencia en el español de México cuyo origen designa animales. Su primera extensión semántica durante el siglo XIX es altamente ofensiva buey = “tonto”, cabrón = “rufián”. Este estudio ubica la emergencia de los valores pragmáticos de ambas formas alrededor de 1960 y reconoce su uso como representante de importantes cambios de orden social. Con base en la comparación de tres corpus orales de distintos grados de informalidad, el estudio rastrea la pérdida de rasgos fonémicos y semánticos de cada forma en favor de la emergencia de valores pragmáticos. Los procesos de erosión fonémica [buey] > [guéi] > [wei] > [we] // [kabrón] > [kabr ó n] > [kaón] son interpretados como reflejos de erosión semántica que llevan a la formación de formas de tratamiento cercano y que, a su vez, desarrollan valores de marcación discursiva siguiendo los pasos de un recurrente proceso de pragmaticalización.
Abstracta
En distintas variedades latinoamericanas del español existe una serie de marcadores pragmáticos propios de la oralidad coloquial que cumplen funciones similares. Los marcadores tipo y onda son atenuadores, pero también tienen un valor de aproximación, ejemplificación, focalización, estructuración discursiva y pueden funcionar como marcadores de cita. Las funciones pragmáticas se pueden datar a partir de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, se establecen en los años ochenta y noventa, y en la actualidad siguen, en su mayor parte, asociadas al lenguaje juvenil. Al mismo tiempo, datos aislados sugieren el contexto de las contraculturas de los años sesenta y setenta como probable catalizador que lleva a la pragmaticalización. Proponemos un estudio comparativo de los usos en la variedad argentina y la variedad mexicana mediante un análisis de corpus y una encuesta en el marco de la “lingüística popular” que toma en cuenta las estimaciones metalingüísticas de los hablantes acerca del origen de los marcadores.
Language Change in the 20th Century: Exploring micro-diachronic evolutions in Romance languages examines the distinctive features that set the study of the 20th century apart from preceding periods. With a primary focus on Romance languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, the book advocates for the adoption of innovative methodologies to enhance the nuanced retrieval of research data: the use of speaker’s attitudes questionnaires, apparent time constructions, and S-curves. Additionally, new materials are addressed as diachronic data sources: mass-media recordings from radio and TV, colloquial conversations, and sociolinguistic corpora. Results focus on the evolution of discourse markers, address terms, as well as on the influence of specific processes such as colloquialization or external mechanisms on the language changes developed during this period. In sum, the 20th century is presented in this book as a new strand in diachronic studies, rather than another time span.
Language Change in the 20th Century: Exploring micro-diachronic evolutions in Romance languages examines the distinctive features that set the study of the 20th century apart from preceding periods. With a primary focus on Romance languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, the book advocates for the adoption of innovative methodologies to enhance the nuanced retrieval of research data: the use of speaker’s attitudes questionnaires, apparent time constructions, and S-curves. Additionally, new materials are addressed as diachronic data sources: mass-media recordings from radio and TV, colloquial conversations, and sociolinguistic corpora. Results focus on the evolution of discourse markers, address terms, as well as on the influence of specific processes such as colloquialization or external mechanisms on the language changes developed during this period. In sum, the 20th century is presented in this book as a new strand in diachronic studies, rather than another time span.
Language Change in the 20th Century: Exploring micro-diachronic evolutions in Romance languages examines the distinctive features that set the study of the 20th century apart from preceding periods. With a primary focus on Romance languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, the book advocates for the adoption of innovative methodologies to enhance the nuanced retrieval of research data: the use of speaker’s attitudes questionnaires, apparent time constructions, and S-curves. Additionally, new materials are addressed as diachronic data sources: mass-media recordings from radio and TV, colloquial conversations, and sociolinguistic corpora. Results focus on the evolution of discourse markers, address terms, as well as on the influence of specific processes such as colloquialization or external mechanisms on the language changes developed during this period. In sum, the 20th century is presented in this book as a new strand in diachronic studies, rather than another time span.
This paper analyzes the diffusion of linguistic change through a case study focusing on the adoption of tío as a vocative and discourse marker in the 1970s and 1980s. Two strands of research are used to explain this case: Firstly, Labov's (2010) theory of diffusion in linguistic change is used to provide essential insights about the groups of speakers who initiate and promote such changes. Second, philological information is considered, encompassing factors beyond groups of speakers: the linguistic features of the constructions involved in a change, the historical context in which the change occurred, the associated social practices, the influence of specific locations (cities, neighborhoods), and also the impact of influential individuals in promoting one linguistic solution over another. It is only when both sets of information are brought together that the necessary and sufficient information about linguistic change can be achieved. The 20th century proves particularly suitable for conducting this type of research.
Previous research on pragmatic overlap and change suggests that in cases in which two linguistic items evolve one after the other to express similar functions, the new form may substitute the older one, the older expression may further evolve, thereby differentiating from the newer item, or the two forms may become more alike. In this paper, we present a case attesting to a different process. In this type of path, it is the newer form that further evolves, thus “outpassing” the older expression in the subjective-intersubjective cline. The case in point is the consecutive development of the Hebrew phrases yeʃ/en sikuy/matsav (‘there is/isn’t a chance/situation’). In Present-Day Hebrew, these pairs express similar subjective-modal functions referring to possibilities, yet only the relatively new pair, yeʃ/en matsav, also functions as a conventionalized intersubjective marker. We here provide a descriptive account of their development in the cline and the factors involved in the further evolution of yeʃ/en matsav. Our findings suggest that yeʃ/en matsav pragmatically outpassed their counterparts due to a semantic advantage relating to the persistence of a circumstantial meaning. Overall, this research illuminates an understudied type of development, pointing to the multifaceted nature of pragmatic change.
Este artículo se ocupa del concepto de ciclicidad y de su aplicación a los cambios de índole pragmática. En la primera parte, se revisa el concepto de ciclo semántico-pragmático propuesto por Hansen (2014, 2018, 2020), se propone una redefinición y se caracteriza el ciclo a partir de una serie de rasgos básicos. En la segunda parte, se ilustra la propuesta con el estudio de un caso: el reemplazo de macho por tío en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Macho se utilizaba como vocativo desde al menos la década de los cincuenta; dos décadas más tarde, tío comenzó a emplearse como vocativo en contextos similares a macho, se popularizó entre los jóvenes hasta el punto de reemplazar en gran medida a macho; con el paso de los años se ha expandido al grupo etario medio –mejor dicho, estos hablantes han continuado utilizando tío/a–, de modo que se ha consolidado la tendencia dispar en la frecuencia de uso –creciente en tío/a, decreciente en macho– de la que resulta un cambio sin retorno, que permite hablar de ciclo semántico-pragmático.
El presente artículo resume y examina críticamente la propuesta de segmentación del discurso realizada en Briz y Grupo Val.Es.Co (2003). El modelo Val.Es.Co. consta de ocho unidades (discurso, diálogo, intercambio/alternancia de turnos, intervención/turno, acto y subacto), tres órdenes (social, estructural e informativo) y cuatro posiciones (inicial, media, final e independiente); se caracteriza, además, por ser jerárquico y recursivo. La aplicación del modelo Val.Es.Co. permite la segmentación de una conversación coloquial sin residuos, así como un adecuado tratamiento de diversos fenómenos conversacionales (actos truncados, solapamientos, elementos suprasegmentales o marcadores discursivos).
Este trabajo pretende explicar las rutas de gramaticalización de igual (y lo mismo) como marcador reformulador y concesivo basándose en un macrocorpus de textos diacrónico y sincrónico. Se plantea tres objetivos: averiguar la posible interrelación de las evoluciones de igual y lo mismo en estas funciones, indagar en qué contextos previos asumió estas funciones y en qué zona se originó. El estudio de corpus revela que las evoluciones de ambas formas están relacionadas, pero el cambio de preferencia formal (lo mismo > igual) originó que la gramaticalización de lo mismo como conector se truncara y la de igual prosperara. La exploración de los contextos previos refleja la ligazón entre los valores reformulador y concesivo. El proceso se desarrolló en la zona rioplatense y de ahí se propagó al interior de Argentina y al español chileno, donde se convirtió en una forma popular. Palabras clave: gramaticalización, reformulador de distanciamiento, concesivo, español americano
This presentations deals with some theoretical considerations on the cyclical semantic-pragmatic change(s) of Spanish approximative adverb "casi". Deriving from the counterfactual Latin expression "quam si" ('as if'), romanic "quasi" presented originally an approximator meaning (similar to vagueifiers like 'more or less'). In present-day Spanish, "casi" presents an approximative meaning, implying a metalinguistic negation rather than involving vagueness. However, the reduplicated formula "casi casi" raises a new pragmatic nuance resembling the original approximator meaning. Applying the ValEsCo model for discourse segmentation (VAM), this presentation proposes a structural path to match the semantic cycle.
Este artículo se ocupa de la pragmaticalización de igual y lo mismo como
marcadores epistémicos, que se ha desarrollado a lo largo del siglo XX en el
lenguaje oral del español peninsular. Este estudio demuestra que el reanálisis se
gestó en las estructuras comparativas de idéntica posibilidad con el marcador
focalizado, y revela que se produjo primero en lo mismo, en cuanto que presenta
la mayor parte de los contextos previos y los primeros testimonios. Esta
innovación influyó en una forma con significado similar, igual, que experimentó a
su vez un reanálisis e incrementó considerablemente su uso a diferencia de lo
mismo.
The paper is programmatic, seeking to explore a recently discovered phenomenon in domain of meaning change, viz. the fact that the evolution of pragmatic markers may take the form of repeated cycles (or perhaps more accurately, spirals) of very similar developments across several diachronic stages (Hansen 2014, Ghezzi & Molinelli 2014).
Following a brief discussion of similarities and possible relations between this type of development and the well-known cycles of grammaticalization, such as the negative cycle (Jespersen 1917), I propose a distinction between two broad types of semantic/pragmatic cycles, corresponding to the two basic perspectives from which linguistic meaning may be studied, semasiology vs onomasiology. Each of these two types is in turn illustrated by two specific case studies concerning the evolution of pragmatic markers from Latin to various Romance languages (French, Catalan, Italian).
I conclude that the existence of semantic/pragmatic cycles supports the applicability of the Uniformitarian Principle (Labov 1994) in the study of diachronic meaning change, and call for further research on a range of questions relating to the nature, as well as to the descriptive and theoretical importance, of semantic/pragmatic cycles.
Las unidades del discurso oral. La propuesta Val.Es.Co. de segmentación de la conversación (coloquial) Grupo Val.Es.Co. 1 Universidad de Valencia www.valesco.es Resumen El presente artículo resume y examina críticamente la propuesta de segmentación del discurso realizada en Briz y Grupo Val.Es.Co (2003). El modelo Val.Es.Co. consta de ocho unidades (discurso, diálogo, intercambio/ alternancia de turnos, intervención/turno, acto y subacto), tres órdenes (social, estructural e informativo) y cuatro posiciones (inicial, media, final e independiente); se caracteriza, además, por ser jerárquico y recursivo. La aplicación del modelo Val.Es.Co. permite la segmentación de una conversación coloquial sin residuos, así como un adecuado tratamiento de diversos fenómenos conversacionales (actos truncados, solapamientos, elementos suprasegmentales o marcadores discursivos) Abstract This paper summarizes and critically reviews the model of discourse segmentation made by Briz and Grupo Val.Es.Co (2003). This model is made up of eight units (discourse, dialogue, exchange/ turn taking, intervention/turn, act and subact), three orders (social, structural and informative) and four positions (initial, medial, final and independent). The Val.Es.Co model is also hyerarchical and recursive. By applying the Val.Es.Co model, a conversation can be divided into parts and subparts without any element remaining unanalyzed. Also, some specific features occurring in conversations such as false starts, overlappings, or the segmentation value of prosodic features or discourse markers, can be successfully analyzed.
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Reformulation markers have not always received the attention they deserve in the literature on discourse markers (henceforth, DMs). While in Romance languages reformulation markers have been thoroughly studied, defined, and described (see e.g. Gülich and Kotschi, in English linguistics, atten-tion to this group of DM has been scarce (Fraser 1990; 2006; Blakemore 1996; 2002; del Saz 2007; Murillo 2007). This lack of scholarly analysis could be due to differences in writing styles in Romance and Anglo-Saxon languages, as Cuenca (2003) has pointed out. Nevertheless, the synchronic and diachronic study of reformulation markers like Sp. o sea (lit. 'or be-SUBJ') can offer crucial insights into the the understanding and development of DMs. Reformulation markers (henceforth RMs) have either gram-maticalized the notion of saying (German das heisst, French c'est-à-dire, Spanish es decir), or have been created by rebracketing a demonstrative and a copula (English that is, Italian cioè), unlike Sp. o sea, which is the result of a disjunctive conjunc-tion merging with a copula. How o sea became a reformulative discourse marker is a question whose answer will take from Present-Day Spanish (henceforth, PDS) to Early Spanish; along this path, the 20th century will play a significant role. Further, the grammaticalization followed by o sea cannot be understood without refering to a theory of discourse units that classifies the different structural config-urations which DMs fulfill. Finally, this theory provides a framework for the diachronic evolution of o sea and a more thorough description of other gram-maticalization studies.
En el ámbito de los llamados marcadores del discurso (entre ellos, los conectores) escasean los trabajos diacrónicos. Parece razonable pensar que, si conocemos cómo surgen y cómo se desarrollan estas unidades, comprenderemos mejor su funcionamiento actual. De todos los conectores reformulativos estudiamos tres: es decir, esto es e id est. El primero es el más utilizado, el segundo está restringido a la lengua escrita y el último es la versión latina de escasa, pero ininterrumpida, presencia en español.
The central aim of this paper is to examine the formal, functional and sociolinguistic variation of the vocative in contemporary Madrilenian Spanish. For this purpose, vocative occurrences found in spontaneous conversations between Madrilenian speakers in the Corpus Oral de Madrid-2016 are analyzed. The vocative is considered a strikingly productive category in Spanish, in terms of both its token frequency and type productivity. Given this highly productive character of the Spanish vocative, this study pursues three main objectives. The first part aims to uncover the vocative's formal and functional scope. To do so, we provide the inventory of vocative forms used in the corpus, examine their origin and describe their semantic-pragmatic features. Additionally, we intend to disentangle the pragmatic-discursive functions assumed by these forms, by taking into account the vocative’s multifunctionality. The second part aims to shed light on the sociolinguistic distribution of the vocative’s linguistic variability. Therefore, the vocative's linguistic variation (form/function) will be scrutinized in light of the speakers' sociolinguistic profile (gender/age).
This chapter focuses on the difficulties that should be ironed out if the theories of two very much disunited varieties of linguistics, structural and dialectological, are to be brought closer together. In deference to the nonstructural sense of dialect as a type of speech which may itself be heterogeneous, some linguists have broken down the object of description even further to the idiolect level. Structural linguistic theory at present needs procedures for constructing systems of a higher level out of the discrete and homogeneous systems that are derived from description and that represent each a unique formal organization of the substance of expression and content. Dialectology would be the investigation of problems arising when different systems are treated together because of their partial similarity. A specifically structural dialectology would look for the structural consequences of partial differences within a framework of partial similarity.
Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Graeme Trousdale develop an approach to language change based on construction grammar. Construction grammar is a theory of signs construed at the level of the phrase, clause, and complex sentence. Until now it has been mainly synchronic. The authors use it to reconceptualize grammaticalization (the process by which verbs like to have lose semantic content and gain grammatical functions, or word order moves from discourse-prominent to syntax-prominent), and lexicalization (in which idioms become fixed and complex words simplified). Basing their argument on the notions that language is made up of language-specific form-meaning pairings and that there is a gradient between lexical and grammatical constructions, Professor Traugott and Dr Trousdale suggest that language change proceeds by micro-steps that involve closely related changes in syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse functions. They illustrate their exposition with numerous English examples drawn from Anglo-Saxon times to the present, many of which they discuss in depth. The book is organized in six chapters. The first outlines the approach and the questions to be addressed. The second reviews usage-based models of language change. The third considers the relation between grammatical constructionalization and grammaticalization. Chapters 4 and 5 focus respectively on lexical constructionalization and the role of context. The final chapter draws the authors' arguments together and outlines prospects for further research. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes propounds and demonstrates a new and productive approach to historical linguistics.
The present paper describes the process of semantic subjectivization that Spanish encima ‘on top’ undergoes in its development from a prepositional phrase (en cima) ‘on top’ to its extended uses as a discourse marker of addition, counterargumentation, and retort. Many changes implicated in the evolution of encima are typical of grammaticalization (semantic bleaching, development of procedural meanings, decategorization, and univerbation of the two original components of the PP). Nonetheless, the fact that the discoursive marker is able to come out of syntagmatic frame, reaching an orational and textual level, gaining in syntaxes mobility or even to occupy a speech turn by itself (¡Encima!) is a serious objection when the time comes to include it into the gramaticalization, typically characterized basically by eliminating the gramaticalized term’s phonology and by the obligatorification and rigidification of the piece being gramaticalized.
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