A thread for examples regarding grammaticalization

[Bestiola]

A thread for grammaticalization enthusiasts - I'm starting with the famous example of the grammaticalization spiral in Latin and romance languages (but any language is more than welcome): phrasal expression kanta bhumos from PIE fused into cantabimus which was followed by another periphrastic expression of cantare habemus (allegedly it evolved as an alternative to a similar construction with gerundive). And yet again, the fusion of that phrasal expression gives Italian canteremo, for example. A similar construction can be found in the majority of romance languages, apart from Romanian, for example, which still uses periphrastic future.

 

[Bestiola]

Another example - I love these:

cild-had "condition of a child" gives childhood
freo-dom "realm of freedom" gives freedom
man-lic "body of a man, likeness of a man" gives manhood

Apparently, derivational affixes -hood, -dom, and -ly originated in full nouns meaning "condition", "state, realm", and "body, likeness" respectively that were compounded with other nouns.

 

[kizolk]

An example I like is the French negation. Its history is a bit messy, but let's start at the point where the usual way to negate a verb was to use the particle ne (from Latin nōn): je ne veux 'I don't want'. The negation was often complemented with nouns that had a meaning of a small quantity*: point 'dot', mie 'crumb (of bread)', goutte 'drop', pas 'step' (from Latin passus). These were originally used in a litteral sense: je ne veux mie manger 'I don't want to eat a (single) crumb', je ne veux goutte boire 'I don't want to drink a (single) drop', je ne veux pas marcher 'I don't want to walk a (single) step', but with time, these nouns lost their litteral meanings and became grammaticalized as a way to reinforce that atone ne, and came to be used interchangeably regardless of the semantic context.

The French negation had thus become bipartite: je ne veux mie/point/pas manger, with ne...pas later becoming the standard negation. It still tends to be bipartite in writing (and almost always so in literature) and in careful speech, but in everyday French, only the second part has been retained: je veux pas manger. After all, if that ne was already felt as being too weak of a negator by itself and needed to be reinforced, why not drop it entirely?

"I want step eat" sounds weird, but c'est la vie.


*alternatively, it could also have a meaning of a large quantity: je ne veux guère manger, originally 'I don't want to eat much', with guère coming from a Frankish word meaning 'much'.

 

[Tironis]

More on French negation, although probably more slang than anything else.

Chais pas. Does anyone still say Je ne sais pas?
J’en sais rien instead of Je n’en sais rien.

 

[Bestiola]

An example I like is the French negation. Its history is a bit messy, but let's start at the point where the usual way to negate a verb was to use the particle ne (from Latin nōn): je ne veux 'I don't want'. The negation was often complemented with nouns that had a meaning of a small quantity*: point 'dot', mie 'crumb (of bread)', goutte 'drop', pas 'step' (from Latin passus). These were originally used in a litteral sense: je ne veux mie manger 'I don't want to eat a (single) crumb', je ne veux goutte boire 'I don't want to drink a (single) drop', je ne veux pas marcher 'I don't want to walk a (single) step', but with time, these nouns lost their litteral meanings and became grammaticalized as a way to reinforce that atone ne, and came to be used interchangeably regardless of the semantic context.

The French negation had thus become bipartite: je ne veux mie/point/pas manger, with ne...pas later becoming the standard negation. It still tends to be bipartite in writing (and almost always so in literature) and in careful speech, but in everyday French, only the second part has been retained: je veux pas manger. After all, if that ne was already felt as being too weak of a negator by itself and needed to be reinforced, why not drop it entirely?

"I want step eat" sounds weird, but c'est la vie.


*alternatively, it could also have a meaning of a large quantity: je ne veux guère manger, originally 'I don't want to eat much', with guère coming from a Frankish word meaning 'much'.

Awesome examples, thanks!

Oh yes, in Romanian there is a similar thing, also with the word for "crumb" - that is mică. So, "nothing" is ne+mică, aka nimic

There are similar examples in Old Venetian with nemiga and Italian also has mica, which in a colloquial setting in northwestern dialects can also mean negation, that is: "mica male" can mean "not bad".

Speaking of French negation with pas, Spanish and Portuguese negation practice is also interesting - "nada" comes from "nulla res nata"; which after a while got shortened to "nada". So now, whenever some hispanohablante says "nothing" he actually says "born". And from the first word of that phrase, some romance languages used the first word aka res - French: rien, Galician has ren and Catalan res, to convey "nothing".

Btw, Jespersen used French pas as an example of the cycle of grammaticalization that he was describing: Jespersen's cycle

 

[kizolk]

Does anyone still say Je ne sais pas?

Now that you say it, I think there's an age thing going on. Chais (pas) is the standard way to say it for "younger" people, but I have the impression it's relatively rare among people of, I don't know, over 50 -- a number I pulled straight from the statistical linguistics laboratory of my rear end. My parents, around 70, certainly don't use it (they both learned French as a second language, but they're indistinguishable from native speakers).

"nothing" is ne+mică, aka nimic

Now that's a cool word!

"nulla res nata"

This is one of my favourite linguistics facts about Romance languages I didn't even believe it the first time I read about it.

Btw, Jespersen used French pas as an example of the cycle of grammaticalization that he was describing: Jespersen's cycle

Oh right, I wanted to mention it but I somehow forgot.

 

[Bestiola]

Yes, historical linguistics is just awesome!!

I mean, look at this beauty:

þā hwīle þe literally meaning "for the time that" gave "while".

From the time when (Old) English nouns still had genders

 

[kizolk]

By the way:

phrasal expression kanta bhumos from PIE fused into cantabimus which was followed by another periphrastic expression of cantare habemus (allegedly it evolved as an alternative to a similar construction with gerundive). And yet again, the fusion of that phrasal expression gives Italian canteremo, for example.

Portuguese (and I think European Portuguese in particular) has more or less retained the periphrastic construction, alongside the synthetic form. PT has mesoclitic pronouns, i.e. pronouns that can be inserted between a verb/stem and other affixes; with verbs in the future tense, mesoclitic pronouns can be used, which makes the periphrastic roots of that tense more apparent. Let's take the verb dizer 'to say, tell':

(Eu) digo-te (te digo is also possible)
'I tell you'

Direi
'I will say'

Dir-te-ei
'I will tell you'

Te direi is possible, but the prescriptively correct way to say it is the version with the mesoclitic pronoun, and still common in spoken European Portuguese.

Ei is from the verb haver, and when used as a regular verb (as opposed to some kind of auxiliary verb) the correct form is hei; that's not the usual verb for "to have" though, which would be ter (from Latin tenēre).


____________________

Off-topic: Portuguese verbs are fascinating. For instance, you can conjugate infinitives (called "personal infinitives"):

É melhor ir para Portugal
'It's better to go to Portugal'

É melhor irmos para Portugal
'It's better that we go to Portugal'

With ir 'to go', and -mos the first person plural ending. Ir in the first person plural present indicative for instance would be imos (but more commonly vamos).

edit: I keep calling the first person plural "third person" :/

 

[Bestiola]

By the way:

Portuguese (and I think European Portuguese in particular) has more or less retained the periphrastic construction, alongside the synthetic form. PT has mesoclitic pronouns, i.e. pronouns that can be inserted between a verb/stem and other affixes; with verbs in the future tense, mesoclitic pronouns can be used, which makes the periphrastic roots of that tense more apparent. Let's take the verb dizer 'to say, tell':

(Eu) digo-te (te digo is also possible)
'I tell you'

Direi
'I will say'

Dir-te-ei
'I will tell you'

Te direi is possible, but the prescriptively correct way to say it is the version with the mesoclitic pronoun, and still common in spoken European Portuguese.

Ei is from the verb haver, and when used as a regular verb (as opposed to some kind of auxiliary verb) the correct form is hei; that's not the usual verb for "to have" though, which would be ter (from Latin tenēre).


____________________

Off-topic: Portuguese verbs are fascinating. For instance, you can conjugate infinitives (called "personal infinitives"):

É melhor ir para Portugal
'It's better to go to Portugal'

É melhor irmos para Portugal
'It's better that we go to Portugal'

With ir 'to go', and -mos the third person plural ending. Ir in the 3pl present indicative for instance would be imos.

Awesome examples, thanks! Off-topic or not, feel free to keep them coming

 

[Bestiola]

One more example from Romanian - vare, oare, veri, ori all come from Latin construction quid/quodvis, albeit vare, and veri and ori have been used in older Romanian, these days the most common is the oare version. And they got creative - they can combine them with cine (from Latin quem), ce (from Latin quid) and care (from Latin qualis), with cât (from Latin quantus) and fie (from Latin fiat): oarecare (whatever, whichever), oarecine (whoever), oarece (whatever) fiecare (every, each) oarecât (a certain amount).

More of them were used before, and all mean some amount of something, or someone, or a unit of time:
vare (în) ce, vare cealea, vare (întru) care, varecare, vare (pre) cine, vare (pre) câţi, varece/voarece, varecine, varecît, oare (prin/în) ce, oare cine, oarecine, oare care, oarecare, oareşcare, oareşicare, oarece, oareceş, oareşce, oarecât, oaricîte, oarecîteva, ori (de) cine, oricine, ori (asupra) căruia, ori (în/de/pre) care, oricare, ori (de/la/în/ cu/din/pre/supt) ce, oricare, ori (la) câte, oricât., eri cine, vericine, veri (în/pentru/cu/de pe/din) ce, veri (întru/din) care, verice, veri cite, vericarii, vericarele, vericui, etc etc

 

[kizolk]

Japanese auxiliary verbs are diverse, fun, and often a good example of grammaticalization. Let's take しまう shimau 'to close':

全部を 食べた
zenbu-o tabe-ta
all-ACC eat-PAST
'(I, you, etc.) ate everything'

全部を 食べて しまった
zenbu-o tabe-te shima-tta
all-ACC eat-CONJUNCTIVE close-PAST
'(unfortunately/completely) ate everything'


Not always easy to translate. From its usual meaning of 'close', it got the meaning of 'doing something to the end, to complete something', which in turn gave rise to 'doing something irreversibly', hence 'unfortunately'.

Note: "conjunctive form" is a name usually used for another verbal form, and most often this one is simply called the te form. But they're etymologically related (in a sense), interchangeable in some cases, and "conjunctive" I think isn't a bad name for the te form anyway, so why not.

 

[Bestiola]

Thanks, that's a very interesting example!

(Btw, is that conjunctive anything like what we usually call subjunctive?)

I'll give a Chinese example. In Chinese (and some other languages of course) verbs can be reanalyzed as prepositions or case markers. From the 7th to 9th century Chinese "verb" ba ("to be") was in an ambiguous state between a verb and prepositional case marker. So, in one sentence it could be translated as both: Zui ba zui-gen zi xi kan. While drunk I took the dogwood tree and carefully looked at it (ba=take) or I carefully looked at the dogwood tree (ba=accusative case).

 

[Clemens]

(Btw, is that conjunctive anything like what we usually call subjunctive?)

I would say the conjunctive form is more like a verb stripped of any ending, ready to join with other verbs or prepositions or nouns to create new forms. The word kimono, for example, is the conjunctive form of the verb kiru (to wear) and mono (thing), which makes a noun from the verb. Conjunctive as a term refers more to how the conjunctive form behaves than to what it means.

Japanese grammar, in my opinion, doesn't always fit well into Latin-derived grammatical terms. For example, the conjunctive form of a verb can combine with the ending -tai to mean "(I) want to do X," so kitai (continuing the above example) would mean "want to wear," but it behaves as an adjective (which in Japanese inflect for negativity, tense, mood, etc.).

 

[Bestiola]

I would say the conjunctive form is more like a verb stripped of any ending, ready to join with other verbs or prepositions or nouns to create new forms. The word kimono, for example, is the conjunctive form of the verb kiru (to wear) and mono (thing), which makes a noun from the verb. Conjunctive as a term refers more to how the conjunctive form behaves than to what it means.

Japanese grammar, in my opinion, doesn't always fit well into Latin-derived grammatical terms. For example, the conjunctive form of a verb can combine with the ending -tai to mean "(I) want to do X," so kitai (continuing the above example) would mean "want to wear," but it behaves as an adjective (which in Japanese inflect for negativity, tense, mood, etc.).

Awesome, thanks for that explanation!

Yes, it's a similar case with many languages outside Europe - our grammatical terms don't fit them usually.

 

[kizolk]

I would say the conjunctive form is more like a verb stripped of any ending, ready to join with other verbs or prepositions or nouns to create new forms. The word kimono, for example, is the conjunctive form of the verb kiru (to wear) and mono (thing), which makes a noun from the verb. Conjunctive as a term refers more to how the conjunctive form behaves than to what it means.

Japanese grammar, in my opinion, doesn't always fit well into Latin-derived grammatical terms. For example, the conjunctive form of a verb can combine with the ending -tai to mean "(I) want to do X," so kitai (continuing the above example) would mean "want to wear," but it behaves as an adjective (which in Japanese inflect for negativity, tense, mood, etc.).

For clarity's sake: I think Bestiola was asking about the te form; I thought I could get away with calling it conjunctive (since grammatical terms that refer to other languages aren't set in stone, and it was just out of convenience for a single gloss), but it was a bad idea after all:

Note: "conjunctive form" is a name usually used for another verbal form, and most often this one is simply called the te form. But they're etymologically related (in a sense), interchangeable in some cases, and "conjunctive" I think isn't a bad name for the te form anyway, so why not.

Sorry for the confusion!

(Btw, is that conjunctive anything like what we usually call subjunctive?)

For some reason I had missed your question, sorry about that!

Like I said, these two forms are relatively close and fulfill some of the same functions. I used the term "conjunctive" for the te form, because like conjunctive "proper", its basic function is to join things. More precisely, clauses (in which case it often simply translates to "and"), or a verb and an auxiliary verb like in my previous examples. It also has a few other uses, e.g. it can work as an imperative (but that can be explained by a lost verb that would have come after it).

 

[Bestiola]

For clarity's sake: I think Bestiola was asking about the te form; I thought I could get away with calling it conjunctive (since grammatical terms that refer to other languages aren't set in stone, and it was just out of convenience for a single gloss), but it was a bad idea after all:



Sorry for the confusion!


For some reason I had missed your question, sorry about that!

Like I said, these two forms are relatively close and fulfill some of the same functions. I used the term "conjunctive" for the te form, because like conjunctive "proper", its basic function is to join things. More precisely, clauses (in which case it often simply translates to "and"), or a verb and an auxiliary verb like in my previous examples. It also has a few other uses, e.g. it can work as an imperative (but that can be explained by a lost verb that would have come after it).

No worries, and many thanks for the explanation!

 

[interprete]

Thanks, that's a very interesting example!

(Btw, is that conjunctive anything like what we usually call subjunctive?)

I'll give a Chinese example. In Chinese (and some other languages of course) verbs can be reanalyzed as prepositions or case markers. From the 7th to 9th century Chinese "verb" ba ("to be") was in an ambiguous state between a verb and prepositional case marker. So, in one sentence it could be translated as both: Zui ba zui-gen zi xi kan. While drunk I took the dogwood tree and carefully looked at it (ba=take) or I carefully looked at the dogwood tree (ba=accusative case).

Is it this 把 ? Did it originally mean ’to take’ or ’to be’?

 

[Bestiola]

Is it this 把 ? Did it originally mean ’to take’ or ’to be’?

Yes I think "to take" was the original meaning, but perhaps someone more experienced knows better.

 

[interprete]

Yes I think "to take" was the original meaning, but perhaps someone more experienced knows better.

That’s really interesting! It then makes a lot of sense that it would later come to introduce a direct object.

 

[Bestiola]

One more from vulgar Latin: "quis sapit"? (who knows) to in Italian chissà, Spanish quizá, Galician quizá and Portuguese quiçá all meaning "perhaps, maybe".