Séminaire : Théories et données linguistiques – thématique spéciale : la grammaticalisation” du SEDYL,
4 avril, Paris
Cher.e.s étudiant.e.s, cher.e.s collègues,
La séance aura lieu le vendredi 4 avril 2025, de 14h à 17h à l’INALCO, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, Amphi 7 et sur Zoom : https://zoom.us/j/3276584955, Meeting ID: 327 658 4955
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1) Antoine Guillaume (DDL, Université Lyon II)
Presentation title
Grammaticalization without semantic change: the case of associated motion and associated posture
Preparatory reading
Boye, Kasper. 2023. Grammaticalization as conventionalization of discursively secondary status: Deconstructing the lexical–grammatical continuum.Transactions of the Philological Society 121(2). 270–292. [pdf]
Guillaume, Antoine. 2024. Associated motion, associated posture and imperfective aspect in Tacana (Amazonian Bolivia). Studies in Language 4. 851–908. [pdf] (Read in particular Sections 1, 2, 10 and 12)
Abstract
The goal of this presentation is to discuss the spatial verbal categories of associated motion (AM) and associated posture (AP) from the perspectives of the literature on “lexical affixes” and grammaticalization theory.
AM and AP refer to morphemes that are associated with the verb and that have among their possible functions the coding of translational motion in the case of AM (Guillaume & Koch 2021) and postural meanings in the case of AP (Guillaume 2024). In some languages, AM and AP are expressed through forms that qualify, according to formal criteria, for a very advanced stage of grammaticalization. For instance, in Tacana (Takanan, Amazonian Bolivia), they are integral components of an elaborate inflectional paradigm featuring nine imperfective circumfixes (Guillaume 2024).
AM and AP expressions, akin to those typically examined under the umbrella of “lexical affixes” (Mithun 1997; Mattissen 2017), pose an intriguing puzzle for traditional grammaticalization theory. They question the assumption, found in numerous works on grammaticalization, that (1) grammaticalizable concepts belong to a limited range of notional domains; (2) motion and posture are excluded from this range; (3) therefore, motion and posture meanings are necessarily lost (“bleached”) in the processes of grammaticalization.
In this talk, I will build on earlier presentations of this puzzle by Nicolle (2002; 2007) and Guillaume (2006; 2024). I will also explore this puzzle through the lens of the usage-based approach to grammatical status and grammaticalization proposed by Harder & Boye (2012) and Boye (2023), which does not equate grammaticalization with semantic bleaching, and its application to the domain of “lexical affixes” (Nielsen, Trondhjem & Boye submitted).
References
Boye, Kasper. 2023. Grammaticalization as conventionalization of discursively secondary status: Deconstructing the lexical–grammatical continuum.Transactions of the Philological Society 121(2). 270–292.
Boye, Kasper & Peter Harder. 2012. A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization.Language 88(1). 1–44.
Guillaume, Antoine. 2006. La catégorie du “mouvement associé” en cavineña : Apport à une typologie de l’encodage du mouvement et de la trajectoire [The category of “associated motion” in Cavineña: Contribution to a typology of motion and path encoding]. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 101(1). 415–436.
Guillaume, Antoine. 2024. Associated motion, associated posture and imperfective aspect in Tacana (Amazonian Bolivia). Studies in Language 4. 851–908.
Guillaume, Antoine & Harold Koch. 2021. Introduction: Associated motion as a grammatical category in linguistic typology. In Antoine Guillaume & Harold Koch (eds.), Associated motion (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 64), 3–30. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Mattissen, Johanna. 2017. Sub-types of polysynthesis. In Michael D. Fortescue, Marianne Mithun & Nicholas Evans (eds.), The Oxford handbook of polysynthesis(Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics), 70–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mithun, Marianne. 1997. Lexical Affixes and Morphological Typology. In Joan L. Bybee, John Haiman & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Essays on Language Function and Language Type, 357. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Nicolle, Steve. 2002. The grammaticalisation of movement verbs in Digo and English. Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique (11). 47–67.
Nicolle, Steve. 2007. The grammaticalization of tense markers: A pragmatic reanalysis. Cahiers Chronos 17. 47–65.
Nielsen, Mads, Naja Trondhjem & Kasper Boye. submitted. Lexical affixes.
Discourse markers, like French à la rigueur, alors, en fait, or enfin, exhibit a range of grammatical properties that distinguish them from many other lexical and grammatical forms and constructions. These properties include in particular the fact that discourse markers are likely to be set off from surrounding text material semantically, syntactically and prosodically. The question of how these properties can be accounted with reference to their historical development has given rise to a number of controversies. It was argued in particular that this development cannot reasonably be explained in terms of parameters of grammaticalization and alternative frameworks were proposed.
Looking at how a number of discourse markers in European and some other languages evolved, it will be argued in the lecture that grammaticalization in fact plays a role, but this development cannot be reduced to it, nor to any extended notion of grammaticalization theory, nor to alternative frameworks such as pragmaticalization or construction grammar (e.g., Traugott 2022). Rather, the development involves in addition a mechanism of discourse processing known as cooptation (Heine et al. 2021). This mechanism can be held responsible for properties of discourse markers that are beyond the scope of grammaticalization processes.
Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva, and Haiping Long 2021. The Rise of Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs 2022. Discourse Structuring Markers in English: A Historical Constructionalist Perspective on Pragmatics. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Two publications for the students to prepare themselves:
Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva, and Haiping Long 2021. The Rise of Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heine, Bernd 2023. The Grammar of Interactives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[Chapter 4 on the role of grammaticalization in discourse processing]
3) Enregistrement de la présentation de Johan van der Auwera du 7 mars 2025 :