Papers by Richard Waltereit
Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 18, 2012
This article examines the diachronic relation between grammaticalisation and discourse. It highli... more This article examines the diachronic relation between grammaticalisation and discourse. It highlights a research which stressed the importance of patterns of argumentation in discourse for the emergence of grammar over time. It discusses discourse strategies resulting in language change and suggests that grammaticalisation is the unintended outcome of those strategies that have scope over a proposition. It also contends that discourse markers are the outcome of those strategies that relate to the coordination of the construction of discourse.
Syntaxe et sémantique, 2003
It is acknowledged that in verb-governed valency relations, the actants can be of very different ... more It is acknowledged that in verb-governed valency relations, the actants can be of very different nature on both the syntactic and the semantic levels. The syntactic dependency relation of an attributive adjective and its head noun, however, is rather simple and uniform. But attributive adjectives are not all of the same kind. Previous research has mainly explained the differences between the types of attributive adjectives as surface reflexions of underlying syntactic differences. In this article, an alternative approach is adopted. The article proposes a semantic classification of attributive adjectives based on the type of contiguity between the adjective and its head noun. This classification also offers a new view on the relative adjective.
The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization, 2011
This article examines the diachronic relation between grammaticalisation and discourse. It highli... more This article examines the diachronic relation between grammaticalisation and discourse. It highlights a research which stressed the importance of patterns of argumentation in discourse for the emergence of grammar over time. It discusses discourse strategies resulting in language change and suggests that grammaticalisation is the unintended outcome of those strategies that have scope over a proposition. It also contends that discourse markers are the outcome of those strategies that relate to the coordination of the construction of discourse.
De Gruyter eBooks, Sep 25, 2017
This chapter discusses argument structure in Romance languages. After a brief review of some of t... more This chapter discusses argument structure in Romance languages. After a brief review of some of the main issues that current descriptions of argument structure are facing, and of some of the most prominent answers to address these issues (Section 1), I discuss major types of grammatical relations in Romance relevant for argument selection, and the problem of identifying valency of lexical items (Section 2). Section 3 is an excursus about argument structure of nouns and adjectives. Section 4 is devoted to the main descriptive problem of argument structure in Romance (or any language or language family), namely the identification of linking patterns. Section 5 addresses argument alternations. Section 6 is a brief summary.
In der Forschung zum semantischen Wandel werden Inhaltswörter und Funktionswörter meist völlig ge... more In der Forschung zum semantischen Wandel werden Inhaltswörter und Funktionswörter meist völlig getrennt behandelt. Bei Inhaltswörtern stehen semantische Typen des Wandels (Metapher, Metonymie, taxonomischer Wandel) im Vordergrund, bei Funktionswörtern und Diskursmarkern dominieren Begriffe wie Subjektivierung und Intersubjektivierung (Traugott / Dasher 2002). Am Beispiel der französischen Diskurspartikel quand même möchte ich zeigen, dass hier die gleichen Kategorien wie beim semantischen Wandel von Inhaltswörtern angewendet werden können. Die Partikelbedeutung von quand même 'immerhin', 'doch' ist aus der Adverbbedeutung 'trotzdem' hervorgegangen. Der Unterschied zwischen semantischem Wandel bei Diskurspartikeln und Funktionswörtern einerseits und bei Inhaltswörtern andererseits liegt nicht im Typ der semantischen Beziehung zwischen Ausgangs-und Zielbedeutung, sondern in der pragmatischen Strategie, die Sprecher dazu bringt, einen Ausdruck mit einer anderen ...
Studies in Language Companion Series, 2012
Explaining language change The ultimate goal of grammaticalization theory, as with language chang... more Explaining language change The ultimate goal of grammaticalization theory, as with language change more widely, must be the explanation of why the process occurs in the first place, when there is apparently no "need" for it to happen, given that language, including grammar, is perfectly serviceable at any given time (Traugott 1999b, Waltereit & Detges 2008, to name just a few references) and that any instance of language change thus does apparently not provide any improvement over the previous stage. What is referred to as grammaticalization is in the empirical domain. Just as with any other type of language change, grammaticalization is an empirical fact that needs to be explained, rather than being an explanation of anything itself (Roberts 1993). In other words, the core issue grammaticalization theory needs to address is, I believe, why lexical items start being used, at some point in time, with a grammatical function. Researchers in diachronic linguistics have taken vastly varying views on this apparently paradoxical situation, also named the "logical problem of language change" (Roberts & Roussou 2003), a term modelled on the "logical problem of language acquisition" familiar from language acquisition research. In generative grammar, the most commonly chosen approach has been to locate change in first language acquisition, where, by some mechanism or other, children would infer a grammar from the input they are exposed to which is slightly different to their caretakers' grammar underlying the same input (
Open Linguistics, 2018
In this paper, I discuss critically the traditional view of reanalysis, taking into account recen... more In this paper, I discuss critically the traditional view of reanalysis, taking into account recent debates about the concept. In particular, I argue that the debate about reanalysis tends to conflate two interpretations of reanalysis: reanalysis as a type of language change among other ones, and reanalysis as the recognition or “ratification” of any kind of change. I offer a possible explanation of that potential confusion. I then illustrate this distinction using the history of the French est-ce que question as a case study. I report original diachronic research on the history of that construction. Further, I discuss implications both at a conceptual-theoretical level and at a practical level for further diachronic research. The paper concludes with a summary and discussion of the findings.
This paper compares left-and right-peripheral uses of first-person strong pronouns in spoken Fren... more This paper compares left-and right-peripheral uses of first-person strong pronouns in spoken French. We define left and right periphery in terms of a model of the French sentence proposed by Morel (2007) and Danon-Boileau (1991). Our analysis shows that both in the left and the right periphery, strong first-person pronouns can in principle serve modal (subjective and intersubjective) as well as coherence-related functions. At first glance, this seems to refute a "strong" version of the working hypothesis outlined in the introduction of this volume. However, data from a corpus of spoken French show that modal and coherence-related functions are unevenly distributed between left and right periphery. In the left periphery, coherence-related functions are predominant, whereas they are extremely rare in the right periphery. Conversely, modal (i.e. subjective and intersubjective) uses do occur in the left periphery, especially within parenthetical constructions of the type moi je trouve, I think', but are markedly more frequent in the right periphery, where they make up for more than 90% of uses of strong pronouns. This striking asymmetry is a reflex of the different functions of left and right periphery as such. Whereas the left periphery serves to anchor the upcoming utterance (cognitively, discourse-structurally and epistemically), the right periphery is a locus where aspects of the completed utterance can be renegotiated .
Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, Feb 6, 2008
FOLIA LINGUISTICA is the peer-reviewed journal of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. It appears i... more FOLIA LINGUISTICA is the peer-reviewed journal of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. It appears in Spring and Autumn (ca. 450 pages in all) and covers all nonhistorical areas in the traditional disciplines of general linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), and also sociological, discoursal, computational and psychological aspects of language and linguistic theory. Other areas of central concern are grammaticalization and language typology. The journal consists of scientific articles presenting results of original research, review articles, critical surveys of research in specific areas, book reviews, and a miscellanea section carrying brief descriptive reports and discussion notes. Manuscript submission: Please consult the FoL style sheet (to be found at the FoL homepage www.folialinguistica.com). Contact details: All correspondence concerning FOLIA LINGUISTICA should be sent to Prof.
Reanalysis is recognized as a key concept of grammatical change across theoretical frameworks. De... more Reanalysis is recognized as a key concept of grammatical change across theoretical frameworks. Despite its widespread use, its role and nature are controversially discussed in current research. Introducing this special issue, our paper gives an overview of major positions that have been proposed, as well as of the papers in this issue. This will allow us to identify core elements of reanalysis as well as points of debate concerning, e.g., the definition of reanalysis and its subtypes, the role of ambiguity and different types of constraints, features such as directionality, abruptness/gradualness and the covert nature of reanalysis. Further issues include the roles of speaker and hearer, language acquisition, language contact, high and low frequency scenarios, and the relationship between grammaticalization, analogy and reanalysis. We will show that some of the controversies arise from differences in basic assumptions about linguistic structures and language change in general. We wi...
Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance, 2016
The Paradox of Grammatical Change, 2008
De Gruyter eBooks, Sep 12, 2016
Journal of Historical Pragmatics
In this paper, I discuss a type of construction that is rarely if ever mentioned in connection wi... more In this paper, I discuss a type of construction that is rarely if ever mentioned in connection with diachronic cyclicity: wh-interrogative marking. In particular, I shall compare sentential negation with wh-marking in French and point to interesting commonalities between the prototypical diachronic cycle (negation) and interrogative marking. The pragmatic contrast between question types in Old French is shown to be mirrored in a similar contrast in Modern French, with the previously “strong” est-ce que interrogative now being a weaker one. In addition, I argue that reversal of anaphoric direction is another shared feature in the history of negation and of the est-ce que interrogative.
Preliminari Tra i paesi europei, la Gran Bretagna occupa senz'altro una posizione peculiare per q... more Preliminari Tra i paesi europei, la Gran Bretagna occupa senz'altro una posizione peculiare per quanto riguarda l'insegnamento dell'italiano in particolare e delle lingue in generale, per varie ragioni. La sua posizione geografica, periferica ed insulare, contribuisce ad un'identità europea ambigua e indecisa; un'ambiguità recentemente confermata in modo spettacolare dal voto del 23 giugno 2016 per la Brexit. Quest'ambiguità non può non avere delle conseguenze sull'entusiasmo della popolazione per le altre lingue e culture europee. Tuttavia, la più importante peculiarità dell'insegnamento e dell'apprendimento delle lingue in Gran Bretagna è da ricondurre principalmente al ruolo particolare che occupa l'inglese nel contesto delle lingue. Siccome l'inglese è oramai la lingua franca di base praticamente ovunque, i suoi parlanti nativi si trovano spesso nella posizione – di certo invidiabile, ma limitativa-di poter comunicare in qualsiasi parte del mondo senza dover imparare un'altra lingua. In altre parole, dal punto di vistadelì anglofono medio, imparare una lingua non è una condizione indispensabile per poter conoscere, almeno fino a un certo punto, altre culture e società.
Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 38: 235-268, 2006
Levinson (1995, 2000) and Traugott & Dasher (2002) suggest that semantic ch... more Levinson (1995, 2000) and Traugott & Dasher (2002) suggest that semantic change proceeds from particularized conversational implicature via generalized conversational implicature to coded meaning However, this model is ultimately neither theoretically nor empirically tenable Our alternative proposal builds on the assumption that PCI are in the communicative foreground of a message while GCI are in its background The following sequences therefore seem to be possible:
1 A PCI semanticizes directly
PCI (—> *GCI) —> coded meaning
2 A PCI turns into a GCI, but is not fully semanticized
PCI —> GCI (*—> coded meaning)
3 A GCI semanticizes, but only after being foregrounded as a PCI
GCI —> PCI —> coded meaning
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Papers by Richard Waltereit
1 A PCI semanticizes directly
PCI (—> *GCI) —> coded meaning
2 A PCI turns into a GCI, but is not fully semanticized
PCI —> GCI (*—> coded meaning)
3 A GCI semanticizes, but only after being foregrounded as a PCI
GCI —> PCI —> coded meaning
1 A PCI semanticizes directly
PCI (—> *GCI) —> coded meaning
2 A PCI turns into a GCI, but is not fully semanticized
PCI —> GCI (*—> coded meaning)
3 A GCI semanticizes, but only after being foregrounded as a PCI
GCI —> PCI —> coded meaning