The Grammaticalization of 'Give' + Infinitive: A Comparative Study of Russian, Polish, and Czech 9783110293777, 9783110293692

Citation preview

The Grammaticalization of ‘Give’ ⫹ Infinitive

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 256

Editor

Volker Gast Founding Editor

Werner Winter Editorial Board

Walter Bisang Hans Henrich Hock Heiko Narrog Matthias Schlesewsky Niina Ning Zhang Editor responsible for this volume

Volker Gast

De Gruyter Mouton

The Grammaticalization of ‘Give’ ⫹ Infinitive A Comparative Study of Russian, Polish, and Czech

by

Ruprecht von Waldenfels

De Gruyter Mouton

Doctoral thesis – University of Regensburg 2009 (D355)

ISBN 978-3-11-029369-2 e-ISBN 978-3-11-029377-7 ISSN 1861-4302 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. ” 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen 앝 Printed on acid-free paper 앪 Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements

This study is a heavily revised version of a dissertation defended at Regensburg University in 2009. There are probably more people to thank than I can list here, and I apologize to those who go unmentioned. In no particular order, I would like to thank the people in ulica celetná, who have been colleagues, friends and informants, especially Saša Rosen; my not quite related aunt Libuška Badewitz, who spent two days interpreting corpus examples; Dagmar Divjak, for her support by Skype; Roland Meyer, for his critical and always sympathetic support from the other side of the aisle, and for being a friend; Adam Przepiórkowski (who might not remember); Andrej Jašlavskij, Andrej Kožanov, Natalia Kožanova, Irina Kiseleva, Denis and Anja Usvjat and others for answering make-shift questionnaires and ever new variations of what seemed to be one and the same question; Sergej Saj, Vladimir Plungjan, Marina Rusakova, who I will not forget, and Aleksandr Rusakov for shelter, support and advice; Elena Uryson, for her friendly interest and calm discussion of the semantic conception; Gary Toops, who almost became my advisor; Lenka Nerlich, who impressed me with her thorough judgements; incredible Matti and Małgorzata Jokipii, Łukasz Sommer, who is really a linguist, and his wife Marta, Artur Kolasi´nski, who first taught me Polish pronunciation, and many more which I have pestered with my questions at odd and even times; the people at Sail Labs, who first got me started with lassen, especially Hansi Völkel; Björn Hansen, who gave me this topic, which I only appreciated much later (and who was probably surprised at what I made of it); Daniel Weiss and Björn Wiemer, and an anonymous referee for reviews and valuable comments; and, of course, Petr Karlík, who helped in so many ways. Thanks to Yannis Kakridis, for support and proverbs; Bernhard Wälchli, who encouraged me to submit the book to the Trends in Linguistics series; the editors of the series for accepting and the team from De Gruyter for their friendly help. And, of course, I have to thank Charlotte, Anouk and Nike, all of whom contributed in their own way; and especially I have to thank my wife Ariane - no way I could have written this book without her.

Conventions

Throughout this book, da(va)t in small capital letters is used as a cover term to refer to ‘give’ in the Slavic languages, i.e. Russian pf. dat’, ipf. davat’, Polish pf. da´c, ipf. dawa´c, Czech pf. dát, ipf. dávat, and so forth.; da(va)t+inf relates to the constructions these verbs form with an infinitive. The abbreviations of grammatical categories loosely follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules: ACC ADV AOR AUX COMP COND COP CVB DAT DU FUT GEN IMP IMPF INF INS IPF IPS IRR

accusative adverb aorist auxiliary complementizer conditional copula verbal noun dative dual future genitive imperative imperfect (tense) infinitive instrumental (case) imperfective (aspect) impersonal (verb form) irrealis

LOC M N NEG NOM PF PL PPP PREP PRF PRS PRT PST PTCP REL RFX SG VBN

locative (case) masculine neuter negation nominative perfective (aspect) plural past passive participle preposition perfect (tense) present particle past participle relative pronoun reflexive singular verbal noun

In order to keep the text accessible and reduce redundancy, per-wordform glossing is kept to a minimum and primarily employed where the syntactic structure is important. In most places, a more focused and economical type of glossing is employed: the main structure (usually matrix verb, main actant of the complement clause and complement infinitive) is made explicit by providing grammatical glosses in the original; lexical information is represented by highlighting the appropriate word forms in the translation, as in the following Russian example:

viii Conventions (1)

i

On dalPS T :S G PetruDAT zakonˇcit’INF . ‘He let Peter finish.’

Glosses generally designate tense, person and case, sometimes also number (which can generally be inferred from the translation). Gender and verbal aspect are only given where relevant for the discussion. If the order of the word forms in the original and the translation differs, subscripts are given to link the highlighted word forms in the original and the original: (2)

ii

PetruDAT nikto ne dalPS T :S G zakonˇcit’INF . ‘Nobody let2 Peter1 finish3 .’

If relevant to the discussion, translated material that does not have a counterpart in the original, e.g., because of ellipsis, is given in parentheses: (3)

iii

Petr ne dalPS T :S G projtiINF . ‘Peter didn’t let (anybody / us) pass.’

Ungrammaticality is signalled by an asterix, question marks are used to signal degrees of acceptability. # is used if only a different from the intended reading is possible. Translation does not primarily aim at English idiomaticity, but tries to faithfully render both semantic and syntactic structures of the source text without loss of intelligibility. Most examples are attestations from large reference corpora. Their sources are given in footnotes with roman numbers that start anew on every page. Arabic numbers, in contrast, refer to endnotes given at the end of the book.

i References

third reference

are given in footnotes with Roman numbering

ii Another

reference

iii A

Contents Acknowledgements

v

Conventions

vii

1 1.1 1.1.1 1.1.2 1.2 1.3 1.3.1 1.3.2 1.3.3 1.3.4 1.3.5 1.4 1.4.1 1.4.2 1.4.2.1 1.4.2.2 1.4.3

Introduction, overview and theoretical framework Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Give with an infinitive in Russian, Polish and Czech . Overview and structure of the study . . . . . . . . . . Grammaticalization studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Causatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Definitions and basic notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . Permissive (‘letting’) causation . . . . . . . . . . . . Curative factitive (‘having’) causation . . . . . . . . Causative domains: from interpersonal to cognitive . . Causee coding: Type I and Type II causatives . . . . Modals and causatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modal domains in causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Negation with modals and causatives . . . . . . . . . Types of negation and informativity . . . . . . . . . . Modals and causatives on the square of oppositions . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 2.1 2.1.1 2.1.2 2.1.3 2.2 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.2.1 2.2.2.2 2.2.2.3 2.2.3 2.2.3.1

da(va)t+inf in Russian Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Syntactic constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Material & Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prior research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Semasiological description of permissive da(va)t in Russian Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpersonal causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Profiles of usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Semantic description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Polarity related meanings: negative causation . . . . . . . . Manipulative causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Profiles of usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 1 3 5 14 14 16 18 19 21 27 29 32 32 33 39 41 41 41 43 46 52 53 54 54 59 65 71 71

x Contents 2.2.3.2 2.2.4 2.2.5 2.2.6 2.2.6.1 2.2.6.2 2.2.6.3 2.2.7 2.2.7.1 2.2.7.2 2.2.7.3 2.2.8

Semantic analyis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Impersonal causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions: permissive da(va)t in three domains . . Specific issues in the analysis of the permissive . . . . Why is the perfective imperative daj! so frequent? . . Reflexive permissives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evidence for auxiliarization as event integration . . . Further constructions types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Letting you know’: cognitive and perception verbs . Impersonal passive da(va)t plus infinitive . . . . . . . Secondary predication and referential use of infinitives Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

75 78 84 85 85 93 101 103 103 109 110 112

3 3.1 3.1.1 3.1.2 3.1.3 3.2 3.2.1 3.2.2 3.2.3 3.2.4 3.2.4.1 3.2.4.2 3.2.4.3 3.2.4.4 3.2.5 3.3 3.3.1 3.3.2 3.3.3 3.3.4 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.6.1 3.6.2

da(va)t+inf in Polish Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Syntactic types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prior research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Material & Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Permissive da(va)t in Polish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview: reflexive and non-reflexive . . . . . . . . . . Usage profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Non-reflexive permissive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reflexive permissive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The causee phrase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepositional (type II) causees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The causee with dative reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions: form and function of the causee phrase . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Factitive da(va)t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Curative causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other types of factitive causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ambiguous permissive/factitive causation . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Passive da(va)t plus infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cognitive and perception verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The modal passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Types of the modal passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modal passive constructions and the reflexive permissive.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

113 113 113 114 114 119 119 120 125 129 134 138 140 143 144 144 144 147 147 149 149 150 153 153 162

Contents

3.6.3 3.6.4 3.6.4.1 3.6.4.2 3.6.4.3 3.6.5 3.7

Usage profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The aspect of da´c si˛e in subjectless MPs . . . . . . Morphological criteria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contextual criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions concerning the aspect of da´c si˛e . . . . Conclusions: different degrees of grammaticalization Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4 4.1 4.1.1 4.1.2 4.1.3 4.1.4 4.2 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.2.3.1 4.2.3.2 4.2.3.3 4.2.3.4 4.2.4 4.2.4.1 4.2.4.2 4.2.4.3 4.2.5 4.2.6 4.3 4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.3.4 4.4 4.5

da(va)t+inf in Czech Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview and prior research . . . . . . . . . . . . . Competition in causation: nech(áv)at with infinitive Syntactic types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data & annotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Causative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Non-reflexive permissive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reflexive permissive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Accusative reflexive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dative and other reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison to nech(áv)at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions: permissive causation . . . . . . . . . Factitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Curative and other interpersonal factitive . . . . . . Manipulative and impersonal . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cognitive causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions: causative dá(va)t . . . . . . . . . . . Modal passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Agreeing and non-agreeing construction . . . . . . Further characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions: modal passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . Residual types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary and conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xi

. . . . . . .

167 171 174 178 182 184 185

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

187 187 187 188 189 190 193 193 193 196 196 201 204 207 207 208 216 217 218 221 222 222 225 228 230 231 232

xii Contents 5 5.1 5.1.1 5.1.2 5.1.3 5.1.4

Czech, Polish and Russian in parallel Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The permissive . . . . . . . . . . . . . The factitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The modal passive . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

233 233 235 238 239 241

6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.4.1 6.4.2 6.4.3 6.5 6.5.1 6.5.2 6.5.3 6.6

da(va)t+inf in OCS and earlier stages of Polish and Czech Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . da(va)t+inf in Old Curch Slavonic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A side glance at da(va)t+inf in Russian . . . . . . . . . . . . da(va)t+inf in Czech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Permissive and factitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The development of type II causees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The modal passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . da(va)t+inf in Polish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Permissive and reflexive permissive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Factitive causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The modal passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

243 243 243 248 250 250 257 261 265 270 271 272 277

7 7.1 7.2 7.2.1 7.2.2 7.2.3 7.2.4 7.2.5 7.2.6 7.2.7 7.3

Conclusions and directions for further research Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Developments of da(va)t+inf . . . . . . . . . . . . General remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From give to permissive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From permissive to reflexive permissive . . . . . . . Factitive: from give or from the permissive? . . . . By-phrases: causatives as diathesis constructions . . From reflexive permissive to agreeing modal passive From agreeing to subjectless modal passives . . . . Directions for further research . . . . . . . . . . . .

279 279 280 280 281 284 286 289 296 301 303

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

Notes

305

Bibliography

313

Index

330

Chapter 1 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework

1.1. Introduction 1.1.1. Give with an infinitive in Russian, Polish and Czech Give is one of the basic lexemes of human language and the prototypical ditransitive verb. Cross-linguistically, the functional extension of lexemes denoting a canonical transfer (to give in English) towards other, more grammatical functions, i.e., its grammaticalization, is a fairly widespread phenomenon. The development of ‘giving’ into items denoting permission, causation, dative, benefactive, among others, has been described for genetically, geographically and typologically distant languages (Lord et al. 2002; Heine & Kuteva 2002). The present study deals with the grammaticalization of give in conjunction with an infinitive in a subset of the Slavic languages, namely in Polish, Czech and Russian. Here, this development involves the following broad construction types in the causative, modal and imperative domain: • causative: permissive (i.e. ‘letting’ causation), e.g. in Russian: (4)

On ne dal emu dogovorit’. He NEG give.PST:SG him.DAT finish.speaking.INF ‘He did not let him finish speaking.’

reflexive permissive (‘letting oneself’), e.g. in Polish: (5)

Nie dał si˛e przekona´c. NEG give.PST:SG RFX:ACC persuade.INF ‘He did not let himself be persuaded.’

factitive (‘making’ causation) e.g. in Czech: (6)

Dal zahradu ohradit. Give.PST.3SG garden.ACC enclose.by.fence.INF ‘He had the garden fenced in.’

2 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework • modal: modal passive, e.g. in Polish: (7)

W ko´ncu da si˛e pracowa´c. in end give.3SG RFX.ACC work.INF ‘Finally it’s possible to work (lit. it lets itself work)’

• imperative: Inclusive 1st person plural imper., ‘hortative’, only Russian: (8)

Davajte rabotat’! give.IMP.2PL work.INF ‘Let’s work!’

All three of the above domains involve modal meaning: modals are dedicated constructions for the expression of modality; causatives can be seen to be the transitive counterparts to modals, as will be discussed in more detail below; imperatives arguably involve modality in the interhuman sphere of communication (go! means either you may go or you must go). These three domains divide into two groups. On the one hand, we have the causative formed by give plus infinitive, present in all Slavic languages and evidently inherited from an earlier common stage of Slavic. In this group, several subdivisions are in order, most importantly, that between permissive (letting) and factitive (having, making) causation. This construction has furthermore given rise to modal constructions in all Western Slavic and in the Western South Slavic languages, quite possibly under the influence of a similar development in German. On the other hand, Russian is exceptional among the languages considered here concerning the grammaticalization of a hortative construction involving the imperative of imperfective give, as in (8). The development of the particle davaj(te) does not seem to be linked to the causative construction; it stands apart and its evolution evidently involved quite different mechanisms of development than the causative and modal constructions. There are similar constructions in South Slavic languages, such as Serbian dajte da otvorimo radnju ‘let’s open a shop’ or Lower Sorbian daj nas hy´s ‘let’s go’; these languages, however, remain outside the scope of this study. The first two domains, causatives and modals, thus involve a complex group of related constructions relevant in all three languages and attested in texts since a very early stage. The evolution of the hortative in Russian, on

Introduction

3

the other hand, involves a construction not shared with the other languages in the sample and belonging to the domain of spoken language, much less well accessible in texts that have come down to us. This study primarily focuses on the first group; the development of the imperative will be discussed only in general and primarily to establish the differences from the first group. Many of the relevant constructions have, as a whole, not been investigated in detail before. It is therefore an aim of this study to provide a comprehensive description of their meaning and use from a diachronic, synchronic and comparative point of view. This is done in the context of grammaticalization studies, a line of research that takes both both synchronic relations and diachronic processes into focus. From the more general perspective, this study therefore adds to the research on language-specific attestations of widely attested grammaticalization paths. I use the term construction in this study mostly informally to refer to specific morphosyntactic configurations in a general sense. On a theoretical level, however, I subscribe to the view that constructions in the sense of regular configurations of morphemes or word forms may express specific functions beyond their compositional make-up on all levels of linguistic structure, as posited by by various branches of construction grammar (see e.g. Fillmore et al. 1988; Goldberg 1995; Croft 2001). Grammaticalization in my understanding involves an increase in the regularity of a constructional pattern and the development of specific senses associated with it in a gradual development. Since this study aims at modelling both established and incipient constructions that have various degrees of compositional transparency, a corpus-based, multilingual perspective is taken to arrive at quantitative and comparative evidence for my analysis.

1.1.2. Overview and structure of the study This study is organized in seven chapters. The present introduction is followed by a synchronic part that consists of three separate synchronic chapters on Russian, Polish and Czech and a comparative chapter on all three languages based on parallel corpus data. A diachronic chapter follows with studies on Polish and Czech and additionally including Old Church Slavonic. The study closes with a chapter containing conclusions and directions for further research.

4 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework In each empirical chapter, the language in question is analyzed separately. The approach is corpus-driven: In each case, the analysis takes a large sample of da(va)t+inf from a monolingual corpus as point of departure; this sample is evaluated in full. The instances in each sample are categorized according to a common scheme with only minor adaptation for language specific characteristics, since the analysis aims to cover all uses of da(va)t+inf in each language. These categorizations reflect the tertium comparationis of the comparative analysis. At the highest level, all examples are analyzed according to their semantic/syntactic type, distinguishing causative (all languages), modal passive (Polish and Czech) and hortative (only Russian) uses, and further minor types. Causative and modal construction are further subcategorized. In the causative domain the subcategorization is the most complex, distinguishing permissive and factitive causation, different configurations of control of the participants and singling out a class of causative constructions formed with verbs of perception and cognition. These are top-down distinctions largely arrived at by theoretical considerations and founded on the existing research on causative constructions in general; they are relevant in all languages. Complementing this deductive categorization, these types are analyzed according to the forms used, distinguishing tense, negation, aspect of da(va)t and the infinitive, the set of infinitives used in the sample and reflexive constructions. In this way, differences and common traits of the function of da(va)t+inf across the three languages are rendered comparable. The subcategorization of modal passive constructions, in contrast, is centered on their syntax and based on the argument structure of the infinitive and the expression of arguments in the modal passive construction. The empirical part starts with an analysis of da(va)t+inf in Russian in chapter two. In this chapter I focus on the various shades of permissive meaning, the core use of causative davat’. Only here do I use explications to clarify different semantic subtypes that arise in context; these are referred to in later chapters. Two morphosyntactic configurations of permissive da(va)t+inf stand out in comparison: the imperative daj and use of the permissive under negation in general. They are looked at in more detail, relating them to other functions of daj in Russian and to polarity-based restrictions in usage of the permissive construction. The following chapter three deals with Polish; here, reflexive permissive constructions as in da´c si˛e przekona´c ‘let oneself be persuaded’ move into

Grammaticalization studies

5

the center of attention and are shown to be more grammaticalized than their non-reflexive counterparts. Additionally to the causative, the modal passive use of da(va)t as in da si˛e zrobi´c ‘it can be done’, absent in Russian, comes into play. Two competing constructions, one involving a subject and another, subjectless variant are examined; the analysis focuses on their differences in terms of their grammaticalization and concludes with showing that at least the latter variant can be said to have lost aspectual distinction. Section four concludes the language-specific sections with Czech. Here, a further causative type, namely factitive (have, make) causation is important, while permissive causation, prominent in Polish and Russian, is more restricted. The most important function of da(va)t+inf in Czech is the modal passive, which is shown to be more grammaticalized than its Polish counterpart. Each language is thus analyzed separately, but from a common perspective, forming the core of the empirical basis of the present study. This perspective is supplemented by a comparative study in chapter five based on data from the parallel corpus ParaSol. Here, results of the analysis of each language in isolation are validated; use of parallel data also allows for a controlled widening of scope to examine competing formants of da(va)t+inf in its respective domains. These synchronic studies are supplemented from a diachronic perspective in chapter six. The use of da(va)t+inf in Old Church Slavonic is investigated in order to account for the earliest stage in Slavic; diachronic corpora of Polish and Czech are used to trace the developments up to the present stage. Here, specific questions of the change of causative and modal constructions are addressed. Chapter seven is devoted to the further discussion of some selected issues concerning the grammaticalization of da(va)t+inf in Russian, Polish and Czech. It provides a summary and the conclusions.

1.2. Grammaticalization studies The past 30 years have seen intense interest in grammaticalization as a special mode of language change whereby lexical items become grammatical, or less grammatical items become more grammatical items. The term has received a plethora of definitions and has been criticized extensively from several points of view (see Campbell 2000). Definitions as well as criticism crucially rely

6 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework on different concepts of grammaticality (in the sense of ‘belonging to the grammar of a language’) as well as theoretic inclinations. Most basically grammaticalization as a process may be defined as the move of more lexical to more grammatical items or constructions. Such a definition begs many questions: what exactly is meant by lexical and grammatical, by item, by construction? Depending on what concepts are understood by theses terms, different conceptions of grammaticalization are used; conversely, work in grammaticalization has also had the aim to clarify these terms. In its most theory-free usage the term grammaticalization encompasses language change as defined by a certain type of source and target construction or item in language change, and as such it might be used in any work on language change that has some conception of what is grammatical and what is not. For example, it is uncontroversial to attest that word order in English has grammaticalized in this sense, or that going as a grammatical future marker in English derived from the lexical verb go must have grammaticalized at some point. However, grammaticalization in a narrow sense as a mode of language change has found much interest from researchers within the functional paradigm working on both synchronic as well as in diachronic aspects of language. In this research tradition it is contended that grammaticalization is a type of change that has its own characteristics, distinct from other modes of linguistic change. Most importantly, it is claimed to be inherently directed and gradual, setting it apart from other processes of change such as analogy, reanalysis, lexical expansion or contraction and semantic change. On the other hand, this has also been contested, claiming that grammaticalization does not exist in the sense of a distinct mode of change, but rather constitutes an epiphenomenon of other, more basic types of language change such as those just mentioned (see, e.g., Joseph 2000). The characteristics of this particular kind of language change is seen to carry implications for a synchronic theory of language for many researchers working within a functional, and especially usage-based theory of grammar. Bybee et al. (1994: 23f.) make this point very clearly: "the study of grammaticalization [. . . ] provides a new approach to the understanding of grammar: by studying the pathways and mechanisms of the creation of grammatical morphemes, we hope to get closer to an understanding of why language has grammar at all and why grammar takes the particular form and meaning that it does."

Grammaticalization studies

7

Figure 1. Parameters and processes in grammaticalization in Lehmann (20022 : 146)

In his influential Thoughts on grammaticalization, first published in 1982, Christian Lehmann provides an operationalization of the term with six parameters that apply synchronically as well as diachronically. While they describe a specific mode of languages change, these parameters are also seen to be indicative of the grammaticality (in the sense of belonging to the grammar of a language) of linguistic items. These parameters are applications of the superordinate notion of the loss of the integrity of the sign in relation to both syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels and relate to both its content and its expression; in a later paper, Lehmann (2002) extends the scope of these parameters to constructions in general. Figure 1 provides an overview over these parameters and the associated subprocesses of grammaticalization. These highly abstract parameters are relevant to both content and form of the linguistic sign in question. Much work has been done to apply, refine as well as critically assess these parameters. Other parameter sets with slightly different emphasis have been developed by other researchers (see, e.g., Heine et al. (1991); Hopper & Traugott (1993); Bybee et al. (1994)), while Lehmann’s parameters have been called into question specifically in the area of Slavic linguistics in the realm of modal and passive analytic constructions, an area immediately relevant to the present study (Hansen 2004;

8 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework Wiemer 2004); still, they remain the most influential and detailed coherent theoretical exposition of grammaticalization. It is a crucial claim of grammaticalization studies that these individual processes take place in parallel, constituting a macro process of grammaticalization with inherent directionality. However, as Hansen (2004) and Wiemer (2004) have shown, in the realm of passive and modal auxiliaries in Slavic not all of these parameters apply to the same extent; especially the processes of fixation in terms of word order, phonological attrition and coalescence do not play an important role. Obligatorification, lastly, is hard to apply to generally optional categories such as modals and passives. What is in the foreground of the above mentioned processes in Slavic are semantic bleaching or attrition, the formation of tightly integrated paradigms as well as formal attrition in the sense of the loss of verbal categories of passive and modal auxiliaries. Similar results are arrived at in the present study. Structural scope of a grammaticalizing formant, finally, is perhaps the most difficult parameter. Lehmann defines it as "the structural size of the construction which it helps to form (Lehmann 20022 : 128)" and makes it clear that structural, not semantic criteria should be taken into account: even if, for example, a tense suffix may semantically modify the whole situation, structurally, it modifies only the predicate it is affixed to: it has small structural scope. The question arising in the context of the present study is how structure in more complex syntactic environments is to be modelled, since the syntax of, e.g., passive, modal or causative constructions is itself far from agreed upon. As the analogy to tense markers suggests, what is referred to in general as reduction of structural scope may be framed as the more specific process of auxiliarization; again, the nature of auxiliaries and the theoretical status of the term is not agreed upon either (see the overview in Heine 1993). One way to relate auxiliarization to the parameter of reduced scope is to view the process as a reduction in the number of arguments that are governed or selected by the grammaticalized formant: as, e.g., modal elements grammaticalize, they cease to select their own arguments and selection becomes solely dependent on the lexical verb it modifies. Let us compare these parameters to a smaller set of parameters arrived at in the tradition of Bernd Heine and his colleagues (e.g Heine 1993, 2003) who adduce only four parameters: desemanticization, decategorialization, cliticization and erosion. Without going into details, we can see that three of these parameters are found on a similar level in Lehmann’s set: desemanticization and erosion

Grammaticalization studies

9

relate to the parameter attrition (of form and content), cliticization to the parameters of bondedness and syntagmatic variability. The fourth parameter, decategorialization, is perhaps best related to what Lehmann calls "morphological degeneration", a process Lehmann generally sees as an instance of attrition on the one hand, but also as a general symptom of the change in status occurring as a "grammaticalized sign moves down the grammatical levels, from phrase via word form to morpheme.(Lehmann 20022 : 118)" Generally, Lehmann’s model is more abstract and complex than Heine’s, as it aims to encompass a maximally wide range of phenomena that can be thought of as grammaticalization. Its main interest is in accounting for form and content in language from a structural point of view, rather than from a cognitive perspective more prominent in Heine’s work. In the main part of this study, only a subset of phenomena will be focused on. As we will see, processes of phonological change or fixation of word order are generally of minor relevance, if they may be diagnosed at all. Rather, what is in the focus of attention are syntactic and semantic characterization as well as the associated functional load of the constructions in question, diagnosed in terms of frequency. As such, desemanticization or semantic bleaching are most prominent; some of the structural changes, such as the rise of by-phrases with causatives in Polish and Czech, are less easily related to the parameters adduced above. This will be discussed in the concluding section. In this study, I assume grammaticalization to be a specific mode of language change relying on parallel changes in form, function and frequency of an item or construction, broadly relying on the work of Lehmann, Bybee, Heine, Hopper and Traugott as mentioned above. Grammaticalization as a development and a resulting state is characterized, as far as our object of investigation is concerned, by the development to and of • highly abstract, schematic and synsemantic meaning (‘semantic bleaching’; ‘semantic bondedness’) • small class membership (both paradigmatically and syntagmatically; opposed to the morphology and syntax of large, open word classes; ‘decategorization’). • clause integration, that is, structurally, the downgrading of an arguably biclausal predicate to a unequivocal uni-clausal complex predicate; on the semantic side, this corresponds to event integration, that is, a situation that potentially involves two events is conceptualized as one, e.g. with a single truth value • high usage frequency with a variety of types

10 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework This represents a selective generalization in the spirit of Lehmann’s and Heine’s as well as Bybee’s and other researchers’ more frequency-based approaches to grammaticalization. The first two characteristics are standard generalizations in grammaticalization studies. The third is more complex, and several characteristics relevant in this context will be examined in the course of this study. Clause integration is not per se a standard process of grammaticalization; rather, it is a complex process involving several parameters, such as semantic bleaching, loss of inflectional categories and scope reduction, leading eventually to a complex predicate where the grammaticalized formant becomes an auxiliary that does not open its own argument slots, but serves to modify the predicate in some way. The last characteristic, high frequency, is less standard. The role of frequency is emphasized by different scholars in the field, and it is generally acknowledged that a hallmark of grammaticalized items is high frequency; but usually, it is not seen as a symptom of grammaticalization per se, but rather a phenomenon conditioned by other characteristics such as synsemantic and abstract meaning. At the same time, frequency is regarded as one of the main driving forces of grammaticalization by many researchers; see, specifically, Bybee (2003). High frequency may be characteristic of both grammaticalized and lexicalized linguistic formants. The crucial point of difference is productivity: lexicalized formants are not productive, that is, they combine with a limited, potentially closed class of co-formants, with each combination occurring very often. Grammaticalized formants in contrast are productive, that is, they are also used frequently, but with an open class of co-formants and in many types, typically with a high proportion of combinations being attested only once. This may be approached from a quantitative point of view in terms of the relationship of type and token frequency in a corpus (see, e.g., Evert & Lüdeling 2001; Baayen 2002). For such purposes, type is defined as the unique combination of some putative synsemantic formant and its more lexical counterpart, such as a derivational suffix and the base it attaches to, or — as in in our case – as an auxiliary and the infinitive it governs. Tokens, in turn, are defined as actual attestations of these types in a corpus. A productive formant will have only few types that occur very frequently, yielding a low type/token ratio; an unproductive, lexicalized formant will occur in only a few, frequent combinations and therefore with a high type/token ratio. In the present study, this

Grammaticalization studies

11

observation will be used to compare different uses of da(va)t+inf in respect to their productivity. Intermediate stages in productivity are possible and lexicalized patterns need not be stable. For example, we will see that the Russian construction of da(va)t with verbs of perception and cognition is very frequently used, albeit with only a few verbs and clearly not productively; nevertheless, we see that the set of verbs entering this construction has been subject to change, with the combination davat’ zametit’ gone out of use in the 19th century and the aspectual variability of the verbs entering the construction having changed. I give a short characterization of grammaticalization and lexicalization as I understand them, broadly relying on the conception outlined by Lehmann (2002, 2005). With Lehmann, I assume that utterances and subutterances in language may be processed both holistically and analytically. If approached holistically, they are given a meaning as a whole, and the compositional dimension of this unit is deemphasized. If approached analytically, the compositional dimension is in the foreground and its overall meaning construed according to rules of grammar and lexical meaning. In general, both approaches are possible in regard to the same utterance. Lexicalization and grammaticalization involve accentuating either of these two approaches, as Lehmann (2002: 3f.) elaborates: Accessing a collocation XY holistically means treating it as an entry of the inventory, as a lexical item. If this mode of access to XY gets more prominent in language activity, it is the initial step of the lexicalization of this sequence. Accessing a collocation XY analytically means treating it as a grammatical construction in which the structural properties of either X or Y or both matter and make a regular contribution to the pattern. If this mode of access gets more prominent in language activity, it is the initial step of the grammaticalization of XY.

Lexicon and grammar are thus situated on a continuum, as suggested by figure 2 (following page). In this sense, grammaticalization and lexicalization are orthogonal processes – part of a freely formed construction might lose compositionality while the resulting new formant at the same time gains in productivity, grammaticalizing to form compositional constructions where its contribution is synsemantic rather than autosemantic. We will see that such a case is found with the development of reflexive da(va)t, where the reflexive element develops away from making an independent contribution to what is an increasingly grammaticalized modal construction.

12 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework

Figure 2. Lexicon and Grammar (Lehmann 2002: 3)

Further aspects of grammaticalization study relevant in this study An important finding of grammaticalization studies is the formulation of grammaticalization paths or channels. A grammaticalization path describes a generalization about the development of markers expressing specific, basic lexical content into formants of constructions expressing grammatical content. The comparison of homonymy patterns in large numbers of languages has identified recurrent paths of grammaticalization that show that certain basic lexical concepts regularly give rise to certain grammatical constructions. These findings are often represented in semantic maps that allow generalizations about what is, and what is not expected in grammaticalization (Haspelmath 2003; de Haan 2005). Majsak (2005), for example, shows that in a large sample of languages, go has grammaticalized into markers of future, past tense and other, more peripheral meanings. Results such as these are important because they empirically investigate what is common in human language; see Heine & Kuteva (2002) for a compilation of a large number of grammaticalization paths. The theoretical relevance of these paths is viewed by many scholars particularily interested in the cognitive foundation of language to lie in that they tell us something about the origin of language and about basic cognitive processes behind the formation and use of grammar. In the present study, no conclusions of a general kind can be drawn; however, the grammaticalization of give can be reconstructed with better evidence in Slavic than in other language families with less documented history, thereby complementing more general studies, such as those mentioned in the introduction above. Language change starts with variation, and only if this variation is propagated does variation become change in relation to a language seen as a sys-

Grammaticalization studies

13

tem. An important issue in grammaticalization studies is therefore the study of the micro-processes of language change, focusing on how variation comes about and what the reasons are for the directionality in grammaticalization. A process prominently discussed in the literature is known as the conventionalization of implicature, whereby meaning elements arising pragmatically in the context become conventionalized and finally part of the regular meaning of a formant (see Hopper & Traugott 1993; Eckardt 2006 for a formalization). A different process is structural reanalysis, arguably a mechanism distinct from, but often involved in grammaticalization (Haspelmath 1998). A further perspective that has to be mentioned here is that of usage-based models of language. Such models share the assumption that linguistic structure evolves out of usage; put simply, it holds that what are first behavioral facts in discourse evolve to become coding properties in grammar. This view is very prominent in grammaticalization studies, and frequency is often seen as a driving force in grammaticalization (see e.g., Haspelmath 1999; Bybee 2003; Hoffmann 2004 for specific discussions). Perhaps the most important point for many linguists working in functional directions is that grammaticalization theory gives a principled way of accounting for heterogeneity in grammar, and explains it in the sense that it provides an integrated theory that encompasses a large area of inquiry, namely diachrony and synchrony, language use and language system. Heterogeneity is expected, since items are not categorized as either lexical or grammatical, but rather situated in a continuum between two extreme points. Formants in different stages of grammaticalization may compete in the expression of certain meanings; this is called layering. At the same time, some lexical item may have retained its identity as a lexical item in one context and acquired a new, more grammatical function in another: an example is going as an inflected form of go in I’m going home or as a future marker in I’m going to call you. Such a development is called divergence. Lastly, the meaning and use of grammaticalized items may still involve elements that are inherited from less grammaticalized stages, explaining cross-linguistic differences in grammatical meaning; this is referred to as persistence. Persistence as well as variation plays an important role in this study, especially regarding Polish, which is analyzed to be in a state of transition.

14 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework 1.3. Causatives 1.3.1. Definitions and basic notions In their seminal article on causative constructions, Nedjalkov & Sil’nickij (1969) define a causative construction on the basis of the notion of a causative situation. Semantically, a causative situation is a situation composed of a causing and a caused (micro)situation: T he sun (= causer) shines. ⇒ T he ice (= causee) melts.   causing microsituation

caused microsituation

 Causative macrosituation: T he sun melts the ice

Semantically, the main participant of the caused situation will be called causee, the main participant of the causing situation a causer. Note that in such a situation-based treatment of causatives, neither causer nor causee needs to be a prototypical agent, such as in the above example. I will refer to these situations and their linguistic expression as causing and caused as well as (in the context of analytic constructions) matrix and complement events and situations, treating the two largely as synonyms. There are many ways to express such a situation: (9)

a. b. c. d. e. f.

The sun was shining and the ice melted. (causation implicit) The ice melted in the sunshine. (causation implicit) The ice melted because the sun was shining. (cause - effect). Because the sun shone, the air became warmer, and therefore the ice melted. (several causes in a chain) The sun made the ice melt. (analytical verbal construction) The sun melted the ice. (lexical causative; labile verb)

The last two examples are the most compressed and at the same time the most specific in terms of marking causation. Both are causative constructions in the narrow sense: they are specialized lexemes or constructions. In many languages, causatives are formed by specialized morphemes, as for example in Finnish: (10)

a.

b.

Jää sula-a. ice melt-3SG The ice melts. Aurinko sula-tta-a jää-tä. Sun melt-CAUS-3SG ice-PART The sun melts the ice.

Causatives

15

Such morphemes are often highly grammatical: they denote the abstract semantics of causation, synsemantically forming different senses depending on argument properties and semantics of the base verb; for example, in the above example involving sulaa ‘to melt’, the causative morpheme denotes physical causation; with tappaa ‘to kill’ the same morpheme forms the verb tapaattaa ‘to let/have kill’, causation most probably grounded in human interaction. As a rule, such morphemes are situated somewhere between derivational and inflectional morphemes, since they may be more or less restricted in their productivity. Lexical causatives, such as command, force, allow are more specific than causative morphemes: they encode specific causative actions and, consequently, have strong selectional restrictions. Grammaticalized causative auxiliaries such as make, have, let are arguably situated between those two classes; they relate to the focus of this study. Numerous studies have shown that crosslinguistically, causatives are of two main types: permissive (as in let, allow) and factitive causation (as in make, force, have); see for example Nedjalkov & Sil’nickij (1969); Shibatani (1976b); Wachowicz (1976); Talmy (1988); Dixon (2000); Shibatani & Pardeshi (2002). A third category mentioned by Nedjalkov & Sil’nickij (1969) is assistive causation, found much less frequently; this is very close to what Shibatani & Pardeshi (2002) call associative causation and situate on a continuum between direct and indirect causation. This category will not play a role here. Often, these functions are expressed by underspecified markers (Nedjalkov & Sil’nickij 1969; Kulikov 2001). The most familiar examples are perhaps the cognates of English let in the Germanic languages such as German lassen, Dutch laten and Swedish låta. Morphological causatives are typically either ambiguously permissive and factitive, or dedicated factitive causative markers; dedicated permissive morphemes seem to be unusual (Wachowicz 1976). This might be a reason why the bulk of the literature on causatives focuses on factitive causation, sometimes called ’causation proper’ (Comrie 1985). With the analytic causative constructions formed by give in the Slavic languages, the permissive function, is, however, dominant, and in this study, more space will be devoted to the specifics of permissive causatives. I refer to permissive and factitive as the modes of causation.

16 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework 1.3.2. Permissive (‘letting’) causation Nedjalkov and Sil’nickij (1969) define permissive causation as causation where the ’causer’ is not the sole and most important agent of causation, as in factitive causation, but rather one that makes a contribution to the coming about of the caused event by “not impeding or permitting” the caused situation that is nonetheless perceived to be more saliently related to some other, more immediate cause. It is therefore by definition indirect and, one can add, more complex than factitive causation. Talmy’s (1988, 2001) equally influential definition is at first sight very similar: starting from the concept of two central participants with some dynamic inherent energy, he views causation as their interaction: factitive causation takes place when the agonist imposes his energy on the antagonist, rendering it irrelevant; ‘letting’ causation takes place when the antagonist’s inherent tendency is either (1) not interfered with by the agonist’s action (‘extended letting’) or (2) some preexistent obstacle is removed by the agonist (‘onset letting’). These relations are given in figure 3 in terms of Talmy’s force dynamic schemata. Talmy uses the same schemata to capture the modal notions of possibility and necessity; the relation of causatives and modals will be taken up below. In a study devoted to permissive causation in Romance, based on Talmy, (da Silva 2007: 3f.) stresses: “In fact, the ‘letting’ category covers a continuum of non-opposition and agent involvement in the event, which goes from non-reflected passivity (due to indifference, carelessness or negligence) through a strong committed sense of granting permission to a voluntary ceasing of opposition and even to cases of affectedness (imposition of force).” Rather than adopting Talmy’s distinction of ‘onset’ and ‘extended letting’, I will distinguish two focal types, closely related to Nedjalkov’s "noninterference" vs. "permission". The difference between the two lies in the activity in the subject: in the one case, labeled non-intervention, the causer does not interfere with the situation, and therefore bears responsibility for it. In the other, the causer enables the causee to do something and thereby causes the completion of the event; this is dubbed enablement. These two will be taken up in more detail in the remainder of the theoretical part below as well as in the analysis of the Russian part, where the focus is on the semantics of permissive da(va)t+inf. Generally, causative constructions involve a conceptualization of causing and caused microsituation according to which the former is seen to be de-

Causatives

17
























  











































































Figure 3. Force dynamics of causation, following Talmy (2000: 418,420). In factitive causation, an agonist (left) with intrinsic motion is introduced to transfer energy to the antagonist (circle). The antagonist changes from rest to motion (arrow below). There are two principle modes of permissive causation depicted: (a) is ‘extended letting’, where the agonist is a potential barrier and stays out of the way of an antagonist with intrinsic movement; no change occurs; (b) schematizes ‘onset letting’, where the barrier is removed, causing the antagonist to change from rest to motion.

cisive among the set of real-world causes and neccessary conditions for the latter. Ontologically, the causing situation is never the only one that can be conceptualized as contributing; rather, it is foregrounded as the crucial part of a causal chain. One has to keep in mind that there are no events that occur unicausally. To switch on the light does not describe all the necessary conditions that cause a bulb to illuminate - structural conditions such as circuitry, power infrastructure, make-up of switch, bulb and socket as well as contributing dynamic processes such as the flow of specific electrons, subatomic processes, light waves etc. can all be, generally speaking, foregrounded as ‘causes’, ‘necessary conditions’ for the situation denoted by he turned on the light. This leads us to the dichotomy of direct vs. indirect causation. This distinction has been discussed for quite some time, under quite different headings (see Wierzbicka 1998: 117, Wolff 2003 for overviews; Shibatani & Pardeshi (2002) for a principled typological assessment of some of these approaches and a new proposal). Directness / indirectness of causation is a question of degree; languages differ in whether or not they make grammat-

18 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework icalized distinctions along this line as well as where they make it. Comrie (1985: 332f) summarizes as follows: [. . . a ] relevant parameter is the degree of closeness between the cause (i.e. the causer’s action) and the effect (resultant situation). [. . . e.g.] John broke the stick implies an immediate connection between John’s action and the breaking of the stick [. . . ], wheras John caused the stick to break suggests rather a mediated chain of events [. . . ] One often finds that, where a language has both analytic and morphological or lexical constructions, the former implies less direct causation than the latter [. . . ]

In permissive causation, the causer makes the caused situation possible, and, all other things being equal, thereby makes it happen. It presupposes some second cause that is not completely defocused; it is therefore per se indirect in nature.

1.3.3. Curative factitive (‘having’) causation A different type of indirect causation is what may be called curative causation, from Latin curare ‘to have done’ (Pennanen 1986; Toops 1989). Curative causation is a subtype of factitive causation where the causer acts in order to accomplish something by way of an intermediate animate agent, the causee. In curative causation, this accomplishment is in focus, rather than the interaction with a causee that is usually unexpressed and either irrelevant, generic or contextually known (see Loewenthal 2003 for a corpus based study on Dutch). In English, have as in I had the car repaired expresses this type of causation; most examples below for type II causatives relate to this subtype. Nedjalkov & Sil’nickij (1969) relate this to the indirect-direct distinction (in their terms contact vs. distant causation – kontaktnaja / distantnaja kauzacija) and note that many languages tend to not overtly mark such causation. A language in point is Russian: Ona sšila sebe plat’e, lit. ‘she sewed herself a dress’ may also mean ‘She had herself a dress sewn’ (example from Toops 1987). This phenomenon is well known in respect to reflexive grooming verbs such as postriˇc’sja ‘cut one’s hair / have one’s hair cut’ in the context of the polysemy of the reflexive postfix -sja; however, already Lötzsch (1972) has shown very clearly that this is part of a wider phenomenon, presenting the quite drastic example of rasstreljaju lit. ‘I’ll shot you’ in the meaning I’ll have you shot in Babl’s Konarmija (see also Babby 1983; Bulygina & Shmelev 1999).

Causatives

19

The phenomenon of zero marking of curative causation or contextual causatives (Nedjalkov 1976: 29) is not restricted to languages lacking a productive factitive causative: Like Russian, Polish and Latin, Japanese (Hashimoto 1989: 73f.) likewise tends to not mark such causation at all. Other languages such as Lithuanian (Toops 1989) possess specialized morphologic markers for this type. 1.3.4. Causative domains: from interpersonal to cognitive Another level of distinctions may be drawn according to the degree of control (Lehmann 1991) the causer / the causee has in the resulting macrosituation. Positing control as the relevant category is compatible with approaches taking semantic roles or the distinction between unaccusative, unergative and transitive verbs (Shibatani & Pardeshi 2002), as it represents an abstraction over semantic roles as well as verb classes. Intuitively, it is clear that causation by a human on a thing is something quite different from a human telling another human to do something, or a thing being the reason for something to happen. Elaborating on these parameters partly based on Koo (1997) I posit three principle domains of causation given below. A fourth domain obtains with inattentive perception and cognition verbs. In terms of control the causee exerts in the caused situation, verbs of perception and other cognitive processes constitute a special class since they denote actions that are in a sense involuntary as they happen, but cannot be said to be beyond the control of their experiencer. It is a wellknown fact in typology that these verbs behave differently from both prototypical control verbs such as transitive causative action verbs and from prototypical non-control (unaccusative, inactive, intransitive) verbs. The causation of these states are lexicalized in Stimulus-Experiencer or Experiencer-Stimulus verbs (En. to frighten; to show - to see, Ger. erschrecken (trans./intr.), Rs. ispugat’ - ispugat’sja) (see also Loewenthal 2003; Chappell & Peyraube 2006 for similar typologies of analytical causatives). • Manipulative causation – only the causer has control: A human agent acts volitionally on either – a non-volitional patient: Peter flies a kite or – a volitional patient that acts without control: Peter kills Paul or Peter lets Paul die

20 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework • Interpersonal causation – causer and causee have control: A human agent causes another human agent that is thus also a patient to do something volitionally: Peter makes/has/lets Paul do the dishes. • Impersonal causation – the causer does not have control: Something (a force or an event) is the cause for – an animate to do something, as in What made you decide to leave me? or This allowed me to take a shower. – for something to happen to an animate or inanimate patient without control: That made the bubble burst or The plug’s coming loose let the water run through or That made him laugh • Cognitive causation – the causee is an experiencer: The causer represents a stimulus for the experiencer-causee, as in He made me think of Paul, He surprised me, That let me see the point One can see that this tentative typology presents a selective combination of the parameters of the causer’s animacy and the causee’s control. In the annotation of my corpus this categorization was approximated by annotating whether causee and causer were animate or not, since control is a gradient concept and there are numerous cases where this fact leads to intermediate types. Consider sleeping: it is unaccusative like to die, but unlike to die, both imperative and attempt are grammatical (albeit with a slight semantic shift). However, clearly unaccusative verbs were marked and evaluated qualitatively, rather than quantitatively.

Reflexive causative constructions In the empirical part, special emphasis is given to the development of reflexive causative constructions. Reflexive causative constructions are those where some participant of the caused event is at the same time also the causer, as in he let himself be cheated. Constructions such as these have found some attention in the literature concerning the evolution of passive constructions (von der Gabelentz 1861; Knott 1995; Haspelmath 1990) because they might help in explaining the transition of causatives to passive, observed in many languages. They do not have an apriori status: I expect any language with causative and reflexive constructions to freely combine them, just as other

Causatives

21

constructions combine in usage. However, these constructions have grammaticalized further in Czech and Polish, but not in Russian. This will be discussed in detail in the empirical part of this study.

Summary I now summarize the distinctions adopted and used in the empirical part of the study as the semantic tertium comparationis, before focusing on specific questions concerning the syntax of causatives and the interaction of negation, modality and causativity in the following sections. Distinctions are drawn on two levels: first, I distinguish two modes of causation, factitive and permissive. Where appropriate, I further distinguish the factitive subtype curative as well as two permissive subtypes: nonintervention and enablement. Second, these modes are distinguished in the four domains of manipulative, interpersonal, impersonal and cognitive causation. This categorization is based on participant properties such as animacy and control. These categories form the grid in terms of which da(va)t+inf is analyzed across languages. Some further distinctions are also drawn where appropriate: this includes the interaction with reflexive constructions as well as the syntactic coding of the causee and the distinction of deontic and dynamic causation, both introduced below.

1.3.5. Causee coding: Type I and Type II causatives An important issue in the grammaticalization of causative da(va)t+inf in Polish and Czech is the form of the causee. In several Czech constructions, in particular, the only way to introduce the causee is as an instrumental or in a prepositional phrase, while in earlier stages, only the dative is possible. This section introduces the main points of the literature regarding the syntactic coding of the causee. Starting with a descriptive generalization by Comrie (1976) with a rich literature that aims to refine, explain and syntactically model this generalization, the form that the causee takes crosslinguistically has been an object of intense scrutiny. Causatives fall, syntactically, into two broad types (for illustration I adduce Spanish data from Bordelois 1988: 57f., adapting emphasis and parentheses):

22 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework • Type I: (11)

Hicieron destruir la ciudad a los soldados. (they) made destroy the city the soldiers. ‘They made the soldiers destroy the city.’

(12)

Hizo venir a Juan. (he) made to come to John. ‘He made John come.’

• Type II: (13)

Hicieron destruir la ciudad (por los soldados.) (they) made destroy the city by the soldiers. ‘They had the city destroyed by the soldiers.’

(14) *Hizo venir por Juan. (he) made to come by John. ‘He made John come.’ In Type I causatives, the causee is given canonical object case marking. In Type II causatives, it is represented as an optional argument-adjunct in nonobject coding similar or identical to optional argument-adjuncts in passive constructions. This class is restricted to transitive verbs, as Type II causatives with intransitive verbs (14) are ungrammatical. While these are the basic facts, the discussion soon revealed that the issue is more complex: not all transitive complement predicates allow type II causatives, cf. another example taken from (Bordelois 1988: 89): (15) *Hicieron ver la ciudad por los turistas. (they) made see the city by the tourists. intended: ‘They had the city seen by the tourists.’ One of the points of debate is what factors exactly play a role in determining the distribution of complement predicates between Type I and Type II causatives (see below). The similarity of the lexical and structural restrictions concerning Type II causatives and those regarding passivizability, as well as the fact that in many languages, the passive and the causative by-phrase coincide in form, has received much attention in linguistic research. Without claiming to do justice to the immense literature, I wish to point out in broad terms some approaches concerning this question.

Causatives

23

The first is the line initiated by Comrie (1976), according to which the causee in a causative construction assumes the highest-ranking case in a case hierarchy that ranges from the core cases nominative and accusative down to oblique and prepositional cases. The transitivity restriction concerning Type II is thus motivated by an avoidance of double accusatives: In the causative of intransitives, the causee may be assigned accusative case in view of the absence of an object of the complement verb; in the case of transitive complement verbs, the causee is assigned oblique (dative) case. This was an approximation the shortcomings of which Comrie was well aware at the time. It did explain the fact that oblique case causees tend to appear with transitive verbs, but it failed to adequately address the observation that in many languages, accusative doubling is possible (as in German, for example; see Kozinsky & Polinsky 1993 for a thorough analysis of this issue in Dutch and Korean), and to give motivation to the particular form in which the causee appears. Later works along case-semantically oriented lines include Saksena (1982) and Cole (1983), who finds that agency of the causee is the decisive factor for the causee to be expressed as an optional by-phrase and who claims that counterexamples should be explained by grammaticalization of agency to the more general structural feature of transitivity. Analyses in this approach are, in my view, united in that they give precedence to explanations in terms of semantic roles, discourse prominence and other functional properties of sentence participants. Apparently following Christian Lehmann’s conception, his student Koo (1997) explains the connection between the expression of the causee as prepositional phrase and factitive vs. permissive interpretation of German lassen with the property of control that the causee is said to have. Kemmer and Verhagens 1994 influential paper in the framework of cognitive grammar is akin to the aforementioned in that it looks for semantic regularities in the expression of the causee. It provides a thorough summary of the functionalist and some of the generative literature on this issue. Starting with conceptual considerations, Kemmer and Verhagen emphasize the similarities between the argument coding of transitive and ditransitive verbs on the one hand, and causatives of intransitives and transitives, on the other. Essentially, they argue, case assignment in causatives is driven by the same semantic and pragmatic factors as elsewhere in language, rather than by a formal hierarchy or, one may add, purely syntactic factors. The following account of the occurence of von-phrases in German provides a representative picture of the factors viewed as relevant in this and many other approaches (the example referred to is Er ließ seinen Sohn / von seinem Sohn den Brief abtippen):

24 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework Presumably, any of these factors (lack of conceived importance in effecting the letter’s typing, autonomy, physical distance, lack of direct verbal contact) holding of a given conceived situation can contribute to the use of the von construction to code the causee rather than accusative case. We might predict that the more of such factors that hold, the more likely or felicitous will be the coding with von. (Kemmer & Verhagen 1994: 133)

This quotation shows the wealth of factors that, as most linguists at least in the functional paradigm will probably agree, influence the case marking of the causee in causative constructions. A rather different, generative, tradition focuses on the crosslinguistic similarity of the passive and the causative by-phrase. In an important paper on German, Reis (1976) raises many issues concerning the generative treatment of lassen; Suchsland (1987) later posits passive of the infinitive complement without passive morphology to account for von/durch-phrases. The main problem with such approaches is that there is no passive morphology to support the claim that the by-phrase is licensed by a passive complement. Gunkel (1998), for example, makes a proposal to have it licensed by the matrix verb in an HPSG analysis. In his account, lassen is an auxiliary verb that may, like werden, the formant of the canonical passive in German, assign an agentive by-phrase, albeit optionally and without causing the lexical verb to take participle form. A more recent discussion is concerned with solutions according to which the causative formant in question may either take a propositional argument and a causee NP or simply a propositional argument. Expression of the causee as an optional prepositional phrase is taken to be one of the characteristics of the latter (see Guasti 1996 and Folli & Harley 2007 for an overview of the discussion). Broadly speaking, the property of causatives to licence both argumentadjunct by-phrases and unequivocal objects has been an important issue in generative frameworks. Other issues include the precise modelling of monoclausal and bi-clausal analyses of causatives in various languages, the question of whether we are dealing with auxiliary, object control, or ECM verbs, more specifically the number of crosslinguistic types apart from Type I and II introduced above, and the status of the by-phrase as argument or adjunct. As one can see, many issues in the functionalist and more generativist approaches are similar, but solutions tend to differ with respect to their more syntactic or more functional nature. Needless to say, there are many intermediate cases where work from many frameworks involving syntax, semantics

Causatives

25

and pragmatics is acknowledged and accommodated; it is therefore perhaps an exaggeration to speak of two paradigms. On the other hand, in many cases, there is no mention of the work done on the other side of this apparent divide. Summary, the following are the main points emerging from the discussion: • in the languages of the world, there is a diverse but constrained picture of causee argument coding • broadly speaking, the causee may be coded as object or as optional argument-adjunct, with many languages having two or more choices with the same formant • semantically, transitivity of the complement predicate, as well as functional participant properties of the causer, causee, and (if applicable) complement predicate’s object – including agency, affectedness, animacy and discourse prominence – are factors relevant to causee coding. • permissive vs. factitive reading of causatives, and more or less direct causation in both the sense of strength of obligation and of absense/presence of mediation have been linked to these factors of agency, if less prominently. • there is a connection to passive by-phrase and/or instrumental coding in many languages. I will now discuss one approach which has been influential in the formal literature, albeit less so in the functional paradigm.In Alsina (1992), work done in the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), the major parameter of typological variation relating to the expression of the causee is both semantically and syntactically motivated and is tied to the assumption that causatives subcategorize three arguments: the causer, the caused proposition and a patientive object that is acted upon: this patient is said to be ‘fused’ with an argument of the complement clause. Alsina (1992: 522) posits two variants of meanings, which constrain the types of arguments that the patient of causation may fuse with: Variant 1: The causer, in order to bring about an event, acts on an individual who is the participant most in control of that event. [=the causee, RvW] Variant 2: The causer acts on an individual by causing an event that affects that individual. [= the patient of the complement predicate, RvW]

26 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework Type I causatives are thus instances where the matrix predicate’s patient ‘fuses’ with the causee, while in Type II causatives, the matrix verb’s patient ‘fuses’ with a patient of the complement predicate; in the latter case, the causee ends up as an optional by-phrase. Since such a choice between causee and complement patient exists only if the complement verb has an object, it follows that the complement predicate of Type II causatives has to be transitive; the fact that not all transitive verbs combine with a Type II causative is captured with the further condition that the object has to be a patient. Much of the rest of Alsina’s argumentation is rather technical. Alsina provides syntactic and pragmatic evidence showing that in Chichiwa Type II causatives, the object of the matrix verb is a patientive object of the complement, while in Type I causatives, it is the causee. Thus, a good answer to the question what did they do to the soldiers? is (11), not (13); it is not a good answer to the question what did they do to the city?, which, in turn, is an appropriate question to be answered with (13), but not with (11). He adduces more evidence to show that only those complement arguments that are patients may fuse with the matrix argument, which links this approach to those mainly concerned with binding. Alsina also deals with the question why the argument-adjunct in Type II causatives should take the same form as the passive argument adjunct in so many languages. His syntactic reasoning roughly amounts to the following: If the external argument of a verb cannot be expressed, it becomes an optional argument-adjunct. In the passive, suppression is triggered by a passive marker; this is termed specified suppression. In the case of the causative, as well as in the case of verb nominalizations, suppression is unspecified and follows from the fact that there simply is no slot available for the external argument (the sentence subject position is occupied by the matrix verb subject, the causer). If the causee argument does not fuse with the patient argument slot of the matrix verb, the causee appears in an agentive by-phrase; this is the Type II case. If, in contrast, not the causee, but the patient of the complement fuses, we get a Type I causative. If the verb is intransitive, there is no choice: the causee must occupy the patient position of the matrix verb, thus yielding only Type I causatives of intransitive verbs. Like Gunkel (1998) in the framework of HPSG, and similar to various functional proposals, Alsina thus sees an identical syntactic component at work in passives and causatives rather than one to underlying the other. One difference of his approach as opposed to others (including functional approaches), lies in the fact that it takes into account not only the semantic

Modals and causatives

27

role of the causee, but also that of the complement patient. This is no contradiction, since these two are not independent; there are presumably few verbs with strong affected patients and weakly agentive agents1 (in other words, we are dealing with highly transitive verbs (Hopper & Thompson 1980) in both cases). Nevertheless, such a shift in focus is important for an understanding of the development of Type II causatives in Polish and Czech. In this study, I focus on a rather different similarity between causative and passive that explains specific restrictions of the occurence of the by-phrase in reflexive permissive and factitive causatives. It is semantic and emphasizes the discourse structure and saliency of arguments in these specific configurations of the causative, arguing that the agentive by-phrase in causatives is identical to the by-phrase in passives because it serves the same purpose: identification of an argument demoted for semantic and discourse-specific reasons. It follows that, diachronically, the thing first to happen is omission of the agent in language use. Only at a second stage, the possibility of reintroducing an agent appears. This succession of stages is described in the diachronic part and discussed in the concluding part.

1.4. Modals and causatives Adopting a narrow working definition, modals in this study are to be understood as verbs or verb-like elements forming or co-forming the main predicate of a cause, thereby qualifying the semantics of the clause in relation to possibility, necessity or volitionality. Classical exponents of such elements are können, müssen, sollen or wollen in German or can, must, should or want in English; in these languages, modals form coherent classes with highly grammaticalized exponents. Hansen (2001) shows that the corresponding verbal elements in the Slavic languages form more heterogeneous classes composed of more or less grammaticalized elements extending from more lexical verbs to modal auxiliaries. As a whole these classes are not as grammaticalized as their Germanic counterparts. The present study touches upon the topic of the grammaticalization of modals in as much da(va)t+inf has developed into a modal in several Slavic languages. This development involves the transition from a permissive causative to a modal of possibility with varying degrees of grammaticalization. The present section therefore provides background on the relationship of modals and causatives in general. Another issue relating to both modal

28 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework and causative formants derived from da(va)t is their (varying) tendency to be used under negation; the relationship of negation to causatives and modals is therefore addressed below. I will first review some statements in the literature concerning the relationship of causatives and modals. In the following subsection I then suggest that the same domains generally associated with modal meaning - dynamic, deontic and epistemic modality - are also relevant in the analysis of causatives. Subsequently I focus on negation of causatives and modals from a common perspective, concluding with a summary. Modality and causation are implicitly treated as one phenomenon in the works of von Wright and other more philosophical or logical approaches where causatives have been used to exemplify or define modality; note that causative verbs such as permit, command or force are often used in definitions of modals such as can or must (e.g., von Wright 1963; Döhmann 1974). Generally, it is a trivial observation that intransitivized causatives may have the same meaning as modals (‘to be permitted’ →‘may’). More difficult is the question if the reverse is true, that is, whether and in what sense causatives represent transitivizations of modals (Nedjalkov 1971). Obviously, there is more information in causatives than in modals, since causatives introduce a further participant. On the other hand, there clearly is a modal component in causatives, evident from these examples. This connection has not figured prominently in the linguistic literature. (da Silva 2007), for example, uses notions from modal semantics to describe permissive causatives without, however, addressing the issue directly. In some older treatments of the German causative lassen, it is included in the class of modal verbs (or ‘near modal verbs’). In German there is an obvious syntactic connection: only modal verbs, perception verbs and lassen take the bare infinitive in the perfect. Talmy (2000: 442ff.) explains modals in force-dynamic terms, including modals and causatives as well as ‘help’ in a “Greater Modal System”, defined by force dynamic semantics and the subcategorization for a bare infinitive. He gives a list: (16)

He can/may/must/should/would not/need not/dare not/had better I made him/let him/had him/helped (him) –push the car to the garage. (Talmy 2000: 444)

In his discussion of Turkish morphological causatives, Kural (1996, 2000) explicitly links modality and causatives in terms of possible-world seman-

Modals and causatives

29

tics. He introduces an abstract operator cause that denotes a superset of both modes of causation and relates, broadly, to responsibility on the part of the causer for what is caused. Factitive and permissive causative meanings are defined over a relation in the set of causally possible worlds and universal and existential quantification, such that (17)

a. b.

A let P = 1 iff ∃ wC , wC a causally possible world, such that A cause P = 1 in wC A make P = 1 iff ∀ wC , wC a causally possible world, A cause P = 1 in wC .

He arrives thus at a relation parallel to that of possible-world treatments of modal semantics, in short defining (18)

a. b.

let P = cause 3C P make P = cause 2C P

However, such a treatment is problematic, since causing something to be the case in at least one possible world is expressed by make possible and to enable, typically expressed by lexical verbs; let, however, means make possible and make happen. I will show below that this is a crucial difference; the more grammaticalized permissive markers investigated in this study imply the (non)occurrence of the caused situation. The question of the relation of causatives to modals cannot be investigated in sufficient detail here. In the remainder of this section, I will focus on two areas: first, the relevance of the distinction of dynamic, deontic and epistemic domains seem to be important in the grammaticalization of modals (Hansen 2001); secondly, the relationship of negation and modals and causatives as dual operators.

1.4.1. Modal domains in causation Following Palmer (20012 ); Hansen (2001) and many others, I distinguish three domains of modal meaning: Dynamic, deontic and epistemic meaning. In this subsection, I examine to what extent these domains are also relevant for causatives.

30 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework Dynamic domain Dynamic modality is modality restricted by objective reality: something is possible, impossible or necessary by virtue of intrinsic characteristics of a participant or of objective circumstances: You have to leave now in order to be on time is an example. Clearly, this can be easily extended to causation in terms of objective circumstances or intrinsic characteristics. Illustrative examples: (19)

a. b. c. d.

The timetable forces me to leave now. Peter made Paul laugh. Peter let Paul drown. Peter (unintentionally) let Paul take the last piece of cake.

All these examples do not involve norms, but objective possibility and necessity as resulting from causation. Causatives thus make the source of modality that is left implicit with modals explicit. The paramater of control that the participants have over the situation may vary in these constructions, as may be seen in (c) where the causee and in (e) where the causer does not consciously control the situation. In all cases, the caused event involves possibility or necessity as modal notions: I had to leave, because of the timetable; Paul had to laugh, because of something Peter did or say; Paul could drown, because Peter did not rescue him; Paul could take the cake, because Peter did not pay attention.

Deontic domain The deontic domain is identified in the literature as the domain of obligation and permission: both terms are derived from transitive causative verbs. The link to modality is thus most obvious here. Verbs denoting factitive causation such as to oblige or to command mean make deontically necessary in relation to some system of deontic norms. Similarily, verbs expressing permissive causation such as to permit, allow entail a resultant state where something is deontically possible in relation to a certain deontic souce. Both types of causatives are often expressed by speech act verbs that can be used performatively.

Modals and causatives

31

Epistemic causation The epistemic domain is the domain of the speaker’s commitment or certainty in relation to what is expressed. Grammaticalized modals typically also encompass senses in this domain: Paul must/should/could be sitting in the park may denote that the speaker only assumes for some reason that Paul is sitting in the park. With the above two domains, we have seen that the causative makes the source of modality explicit (e.g., Paul could take the cake because Peter didn’t pay attention). No straightforward analogy in the epistemic domain is apparent; e.g., we do not say The time of day makes Paul sit in the Park to denote Peter must be sitting in the park (since it is lunch time). However, in some cases permissive causatives seem to have evolved to denote meanings belonging to the epistemic domain, such as to assume. One such extension I would like to mention involves expressions diachronically or synchronically derived from Russian pustit’ ‘to let, discharge’ such as dopustit’ ‘admit, concede, allow’ as in dopuskat’ vozmožnost’ ‘admit the possibility’ and the optative marker pust’ / puskaj as in the following examples (from the RNC): (20)

Puskaj, naprimer, Javlinskij sdelaet oficial’noe javlenie [. . . ] ‘Let’s assume, for example, that Javlinskij makes an official statement [. . . ].’

In English or German, similar extensions are found. The imperative of lassen and let may denote a proposal to consider something, as in Let it be as it may; Nedjalkov (1976: 209) calls this meaning of lassen ‘hypothetical permissivity’ and adduces Laß ihn dreimal ein Gentleman sein. . . — das war Vernichtung (Arnold Zweig) as an example. These uses may be considered extensions of causation to the epistemic domain of assumption and certainty.

Summary In both causatives and modals, the distinction of modal and deontic domain has shown to be of linguistic relevance; however, in contradistinction to these, no clear analogous paradigmatic relation is found in the epistemic domain, even though some use of causatives relating to this domain may be observed.

32 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework 1.4.2.

Negation with modals and causatives

This section is concerned with the interaction of causatives and modals with negation and has the aim to provide the ground for the explanation of an empirical finding, namely, that da(va)t+inf in these functions has a tendency to be used foremost in negative polarity. My point of departure is the assumption that informativity is a factor influencing usage frequency as analyzed in the empirical part. I first analyze negation in terms of informativity and then extend the discussion to dual operators, a class both modals and causatives belong to. Finally, I examine internal negation in the semantics of permissives and relate this to tests distinguishing permissive from factitive usage. Note that this treatment is not meant to be exhaustive and glosses over many complicated issues.

1.4.2.1. Types of negation and informativity A basic notion concerning negation is the distinction of contrary and contradictory opposite terms, ultimately going back to Aristotle’s metaphysics. Contrary terms obey the Law of Non-Contradiction (henceforth LNC): One cannot at the same time say of a piece of paper that it is all blue and all red; these color terms are contrary in the sense that they cannot both be true of one object at the same time. It may, however, be neither, for example, it may be black. Contradictory terms obey both the LNC as well as the Law of the Excluded Middle (henceforth LEM) that states that some predication is either true or not true.2 Predicates that stand in a contradictory relationship cannot both be false at the same time: one of them has to be true, tertium non datur. A number is odd or even; a person is dead or alive; ice on a lake may hold or may not hold. To negate one is thus to affirm the other. This directly relates to informativeness. Affirmative statements tell us something about the world; for example, the statement Walt Whitman lived in New Jersey tells us something about the state of the world. Negation of contraries do not tell us much, and will, in order to be informative, somehow refer to an assumption in the context that the predicate might be true: To say that Walt Whitman did not live in London will not tell us much about the world, unless we have reason to suspect he did.

Modals and causatives

33

The negation of contradictories, conversely, is informative: to say Walt Whitman is not among the living is informative, since it is equivalent to the affirmation that he is dead.3 All this is, of course, a simplification. First of all, saying that a certain utterance needs context in order to be informative is in a certain sense another way of saying that the hearer will try to supply some context that will make the utterance informative (by Gricean principles). On the other hand, affirmative information is also in need of context in order to be informative; for example stating that Walt Whitman is dead in this study is only informative if it serves as an illustration to some point relevant to its subject matter. This links up to the difficult question of what is to be counted as affirmative (Horn 1989). I will not discuss this here; note that in any case, negative, not positive polarity is the marked category in language and that I suggest one of the reasons for this is inherent in their differences with respect to informativity. As we move from the realm of logical semantics and turn to natural language, the role of pragmatics becomes more important. For example, as Horn (1989) suggests, what is commonly known as neg-raising of verbs such as think, assume, believe, etc., can be understood as a contradictory reading of a logically contrary negation, triggered by Gricean principles of cooperation. I do not think Walt Whitman is dead is, prima facie, not a very informative statement, since it does not tell us much about the speaker’s beliefs, only about his non-beliefs. Horn argues that under the assumption of cooperation, such a statement is interpreted as a member of a contradictory opposition: one may either think that p, or one may think that not-p. Under the assumption that a third option is not given, that is, that these two propositions stand in a contradictory relationship, not think that p is interpreted as a polite understatement equivalent to think that not p. Contradictory oppositions in language may thus be grounded in discourse rather than in logic.

1.4.2.2. Modals and causatives on the square of oppositions A special class of contradictory predicates is known as dual operators. This class includes partial and total quantifiers, modal auxiliaries expressing possibility and necessity and factitive and permissive causatives – the predicates we are interested in here. All these operators are dual in the sense that each pair is interdefinable by negation (see Löbner 1990 for discussion of a large

34 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework set of dual operators). They involve two places of negation: the operator itself and its argument may be independently negated. Wide-scope negation over predicate and argument is equivalent to its contradictory term and narrow scope of negation. Thus, not possible is equivalent to necessarily not; not anybody speaks is equivalent to all do not speak; not to let somebody do something is equivalent to make somebody not do something. In general, with dual operators a and b, the following set of relations holds: (21)

a. b.

¬ a (p) = b (¬ p) a (p) = ¬ b (¬ p)

If we consider all combinations of predicates and negation in terms of contradictory and contrary opposition, we arrive at the Square of Oppositions derived from Aristotle and his medieval commenter Boethius and shown in figure 4. This last section has served to introduce the distinction between contradictory and contrary negation and to suggest that negated contradictories are as such more informative than negated contraries. In the following, I relate this idea to modals and causatives. I again start from the assumption that affirming something about a state of affairs is more informative than negating something about it. With causatives and modals, this question becomes more complicated because we are dealing with two potential negations: the modal or causative operator itself as well as the proposition it modifies may open a place for a negating element. This links up to the property of veridicality of an operator, that is, whether or not the truth value of that operator determines the truth value of its proposition. I will next evaluate all four corners of the square in respect to their veridicality and informativeness. English let is used to exemplify a permissive marker in this discussion. To enable is used to exemplify a straightforward transitivization of possibility cause to be possible. An aim of this section is to highlight the difference between these two types of predicates in order to shed light on the nature of the relation of permissive causatives to modals of necessity. It can be easily seen that only the top two corners of the square of oppositions contain veridical predicates. I will start with the upper left (A) corner. If something is necessarily the case, this implies that it indeed is the case. Likewise, if somebody is forced to do something, it follows that it is the case that they do it. The dual operator counterparts behave likewise, although they seem to be more unusual and, generally, harder to understand4 : if something is impossible not to be the case (not poss not p), it is indeed the case; the ana-

Modals and causatives

A nec (p) = ¬ poss (¬p)

contrary: cannot both be true, but both may be false

fact (p) = ¬ perm (¬p)

35

E nec (¬p ) = ¬ poss (p ) fact (¬p ) = ¬ perm (p)

contradictory: either one is true or false

implies I poss (p) = ¬ nec (¬p) perm (p) = ¬ fact (¬p)

implies O poss (¬p ) subcontrary: both may be true at = ¬ nec (p ) the same time, but not both false

perm (¬p ) = ¬ fact (p)

Figure 4. Square of oppositions for dual operators adapted to modals and permissives. See van der Auwera (1985); Löbner (1990); Horn (1989); in relation to modals, see van der Auwera (1996, 2000); de Haan (1997).

logue applies in the case somebody does not let somebody not do something (not perm not p); the latter is implied to do it. The A-corner of the square thus contains veridical modal and causative predicates, which I consider informative by themselves, that is, without strong contextual anchoring. In the upper right (E) corner, the same applies. In saying that something is impossible, one implies that it is not done / not the case. Likewise, if somebody does not let somebody else do something, this implies that the latter does not do it. Not to enable, conversely, does not mean the same as make impossible: it does not entail anything. Both permissive let and modals denoting impossibility are thus veridical: they imply a truth value of the term over which they have scope, albeit a negative truth value. Again, the dual counterparts show the same characteristic, but are not nearly as natural: to say that something was necessary not to be the case implies that it was not the case (nec not p); if somebody is forced not to

36 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework do something (fact not p), he does not do it. The E-corner of the square thus contains veridical operators; however, they are not as informative as the upper left square, as the implied truth value is negative: they entail that something is not the case, which itself needs to be salient information. Even less informative without context is the lower left (I) corner of the square. To say that something is possible is not to say anything about whether or not it is the case; logically, this position is therefore not veridical. However, modal operators often do imply, perhaps pragmatically, the truth value of their propositional argument: note that a sentence such as He was able to walk away, but didn’t is odd, if not ungrammatical; he would have been able to walk away, but didn’t is clearly preferable. In Russian, the perfective smoˇc’ expresses both possibility and realization of the event. The picture is more categorial with permissive causatives: he let him go implies that he did go; he enabled him to go does not (this difference will be taken up below). The dual counterparts not necessary that not and not make somebody not do something are highly unusual and very elaborate; logically, they are clearly non-veridical. Least informative of all is the lower right (O) corner . That something is not necessary does not logically entail anything about whether it is the case; also, no unequivocal pragmatic effects seem to obtain: he didn’t need to go there, but did / and did not are both felicitous. The same evidently applies to the causative case he did not make him do it. The dual counterpart possible not to seems to behave basically the same; it is logically nonveridical. The O-corner is hard to express with many formants. It is infelicitous with the grammaticalized modal can as in ?he can (not go there); he is able not to do it is possible, but unusual at best. Internal negation of permissives is very unusual, but possible with many formants. With let the proposition is veridical by virtue of the auxiliary (see below): he let her not do it, *but she did. Enable somebody to not do something is non-veridical, but marginal at best. Horn (1989: 260ff.) has proposed that lexicalizations of this corner are unusual, with counterexamples later adduced including German nicht brauchen (not nec p) and others (see van der Auwera 1996: 186). In any case, it seems reasonable to presume that in natural language, this corner has the least functional load of the four. Overall, we have seen that factitives behave very similar to modals of necessity while some differences mainly concern permissives and modals of possibility.

Modals and causatives

37

Only the upper two corners of the square, that is, neccesity / factitive causation as well as negated possibility / negated permissive causation are logically veridical, in as much as both upper corners can be logically framed to involve wide scope affirmation of necessity / factitives. The right corner contains negation over the predicated proposition; the truth value of the predicated proposition is implied to be false. As such, the informativity of this negated proposition itself relies on the saliency in context. The lower left (I) corner is less clear, and there is an analogous difference in the behavior of expressions of modality and causation with respect to veridicality. Logically, these operators are non-veridical, but in natural language, modals of possibility do seem to have a certain inclination towards veridicality, depending on specific lexicalizations or certain morphosyntactic surroundings, the indicative past tense in particular. It is plausible to attribute this to an implicature to the effect that if one says (in the past) that something was possible and does not state whether it actually took place, there is an assumption that it was in fact done which increases informativity and relevance; thus, we are dealing with a quantitative implicature that may become conventionalized. With permissives, a similar picture obtains. There are two options: General permissive markers, such as English let, French laisser, Portuguese deixar, German lassen, zulassen, Finnish antaa and Slavic da(va)t as well as cognates of pozvolit’ are, as far as one can tell, generally veridical. There are also more narrow permissive lexical items such as (most clearly) umo˙zliwi´c or to enable, and less categorically, to permit, that are non-veridical or may show veridicality only in certain pragmatic or morphosyntactic surroundings. On first sight, this difference seems to be a clear difference to possibility modals, but since modals of possibility also show a certain inclination to veridicality, this is arguably a difference of degree. The lower right (O) corner, finally, is not veridical and generally of lower functional load in language.

Internal and external negation So far, we have seen that causatives, like modals, are interdefinable by negation, and that the corners of the square of opposition, representing all combinations of wide and narrow scope negation, differ in their veridicality, that

38 Introduction, overview and theoretical framework is, by extension, in their informativity. Disregarding internal negation (which seems to be a dispreferred option at least in the languages covered here; see table 1 for a corpus count), the two squares may be simplified as follows, with veridical corners marked in bold: modals

causatives

A nec (p)

E ¬ pos (p)

A fact (p)

E ¬ perm (p)

I pos (p)

O ¬ nec (p)

I perm (p)

O ¬ fact (p)

Modals and causatives thus differ in their veridicality. Modals of possibility are not, generally, veridical, unless they are negated. Permissive causatives such as let are veridical regardless of polarity; however, items that encode the causation of possibility, such as to enable behave like modals of possibility. Modals of necessity, as well as factitives, behave alike: they are veridical only if affirmed. The relevance of the above for the analysis of da(va)t in Slavic is that these considerations supply an explanation for permissive markers as well as markers of possibility to have a certain inclination towards negative polarity. Whether or not this is reflected in actual usage frequency of a given marker will, however, rely on the overall system of causative and modal formants: I do not predict that all permissive or possibility markers are necessarily more prone to be used in negative contexts. However, I do predict that negated necessity or factitivity is overall less frequent than negated possibility or permissivity. A preliminary search in the Polish IPI PAN Sample for two grammaticalized predicative modals and two modal adjectives in combination with negation was employed to test this suggestion. The results for the predicatives (nie) mo˙zna (nie) ‘(not) poss (not)’ and (nie) trzeba (nie) ‘(not) nec (not)’ as well as the adjectives (nie)potrzebny ‘(un)necessary’ and (nie)mo˙zliwy ‘(im)possible’ are shown in table 1 and support the suggestion; the proportion of negated instances is higher with possibility than with necessity, most clearly with the predicative modals (p Recipient > Agent. However, this is not the case here: (54)

Petja dalPS T :3S G mneDAT dvux pomošˇcnikovACC kontrol’nye proverjat’INF . ‘Peter gave me two assistants to check [the students’] tests.’

In (54), three interpretations are possible for the unexpressed complement subject: Either the speaker (the recipient), the assistents (the patient) or both are understood to check the tests; Podlesskaya explains this by agentive properties of the patient. While I do not take issue with this assertion, this phenomenon cannot be attributed to davat: replacement by prislat’ ‘send’ leads to identical control relations: (55)

Petja prislalPS T :3S G mneDAT dvux pomošˇcnikovACC kontrol’nye proverjat’INF . ‘Peter sent mei two assistants j to checki, j [the students’] tests.’

Summarizing, Podlesskaya opts for a hybrid nature of the constructions involving da(va)t with donatory object and purposive infinitive and asserts that they exhibit “high integrity”, which she views to be “a symptom of grammat-

52 da(va)t+inf in Russian domain Interpersonal Manipulative inan. causer / anim. causee both inanim.

n

rel.

2,423 421 398 122 3,364

72% 13% 12% 4% 100%

negated abs . rel. 1,508 62% 224 53% 369 93% 118 97% 2,219 66%

Table 3. Distribution of permissive causative da(va)t across domains and proportion of negated instances.

icalization”. However, the linguistic facts she adduces for this assessment in relation to da(va)t alone is questionable, since they also hold for other verbs, as I have shown. While the set of these verbs was not systematically evaluated, it seems to be the case that all of them belong to the class of verbs of giving and receiving, pointing to a more general, semantic basis of the phenomena described by Podlesskaya.

2.2. Semasiological description of permissive da(va)t in Russian In this subsection, I shall be concerned with the meaning and use of permissive da(va)t in Russian. Factors that influence the meaning include animacy, control, negation and mood. Table 3 shows an overview of the distribution of permissive causatives across domains in the corpus. As we can see, the main use of permissive da(va)t+inf is in the interpersonal domain; it is used in all domains, however. The table moreover shows that it is used predominantly with negation in all domains without being a Negative Polarity Item stricto sensu. This will be discussed in detail below. In the following analysis it will be shown that in some cases, qualitative difference of grammaticality obtain between positive and negative usage. For each domain, I discuss specific readings of the permissive, showing them to be linked to the domain in question as well as to negation. Only in this section relating to Russian will the focus thus be on semantics, and, correspondingly, only in this section will I make extensive use of explication in order to clarify these readings.

Semasiological description of permissive da(va)t in Russian

53

2.2.1. Overview Aspect use with da(va)t+inf involves two parameters: the aspect of the infinitive and the aspect of da(va)t itself. In the course of the present study, I compare the use of da(va)t+inf across languages and constructions and I show that there are differences in terms of aspect usage with da(va)t+inf in the various languages. However, aspect choice in infinitive constructions is a subject that is in general not well described (but see for example Fielder 1984). This subject would need to be approached from a broader point of view, involving a comparison of da(va)t+inf to several different matrix verbs. An additional complicating factor for the present study is that the aspectual systems in the three languages involved differ (see Dickey 2000). An exhaustive analysis of the use of aspect with da(va)t+inf in all languages examined is therefore not attempted in this study. With some exceptions, aspect choice in the use of da(va)t+inf will be examined only from a bird eye’s view, examining profiles of usage rather than individual cases. However, I would like to point out that, by and large, aspect choice of the aspect of da(va)t in permissive function in Russian seems to be subject to the general rules of the Russian aspectual system. As (56) illustrates, in canonical contexts such as the actual present or iterative/habitual, perfective dat’ may not be used, while the infinitive may take both aspects. (56)

On vsegda *dal / daval mne He always *let(PF).PST.SG / let(IPF).PST.SG me.DAT dogovorit’ / dogavarivat’. finish(PF).INF / finish(IPF).INF ‘He always let (*pf/ipf) me finish (pf/ipf).’

I assume that like its lexical counterpart denoting to give, dat’ in permissive function denotes a bounded event by lexical default, and will not further analyze this matter. As in the remainder of this study, detailed usage profiles of da(va)t and its infinitive as well as frequency lists of the verbs found in the corpus are presented. These usage profiles help single out differences between the languages, and their format is held consistent across them; they also serve documentational ends enabling the reader to evaluate claims made in the texts. Verb lists serve to document combinations of verbs and infinitives in the corpus, allowing the reader to assess their variety not only of the most frequent combinations; secondly, they allow an evaluation of productivity. As

54 da(va)t+inf in Russian pointed out in the introduction, productive formations may be distinguished from non-productive, lexicalized formations from a corpus-based perspective by evaluating the proportion of seldom used combinations to the overall use of the formation: the higher that proportion is, the higher the productivity of such formations. In this section, I will first focus on a semasiological analysis of permissive da(va)t+inf in Russian on a per-domain basis and single out different focal senses obtaining. This is done for positive and negative polarity separately. I then turn to specific questions, namely the use of the imperative form daj; in section 2.2.6.2 I discuss the use of the reflexive permissive construction, important for the comparison to the other languages, where it has further grammaticalized into modals. After that, cognitive causation with da(va)t is looked into in more detail before covering residual types and reaching my conclusion regarding the grammaticalization of da(va)t+inf in Russian.

2.2.2. Interpersonal causation 2.2.2.1. Profiles of usage In the interpersonal domain, both causer and causee are animate and agentive; both act intentionally and possess control. Tables 4 to 5 give overviews of various combinations of aspect, negation as well as frequency of forms in interpersonal permissive causation, that is, the most frequent type of permissive da(va)t. Table 4 offers an overviews over the morphological forms of da(va)t used in the corpus and their respective use in (a) negative contexts and (b) with perfective complement infinitives. It shows that negative polarity dominates with both aspects of da(va)t and all forms except the perfective imperative and infinitive. Note that throughout this study, numbers for polarity take only overt negation of da(va)t itself into account; the polarity of superordinate predicates such as modals or functors involving covert negation, such as adverbials like vrjad li ‘hardly’, is disregarded. Since infinitives occur typically with such superordinate predicates, the figures concerning the polarity of the infinitive are skewed toward of positive polarity. I therefore consider the low number of negated infinitives an artefact of my approach.

Semasiological description of permissive da(va)t in Russian

forms infinitive participle imperative morph. present past all w/o inf, imp

count 274 113 356 245 529 1,517 887

perfective dat’ neg. perf. compl. 131 (48%) 258 (94%) 91 (81%) 111 (98%) 34 (10%) 326 (92%) 161 (66%) 192 (78%) 356 (67%) 487 (92%) 773 (51%) 1,374 (91%) 608 (69%) =65% of all

count 32 187 31 312 266 828 765

55

imperfective davat’ neg. perf. compl. 25 (78%) 13 (41%) 158 (84%) 156 (83%) 26 (84%) 11 (35%) 261 (84%) 175 (56%) 217 (82%) 124 (47%) 687 (83%) 479 (58%) 636 (83%) =35% of all

500

67% pos neg

300

10% 84%

48%

82%

66% 84%

100

81% 78%

84%

0

absolute number of tokens

Forms and polarity

inf.

part. imper. non−past perfective DAT

past

inf.

part. imper. non−past imperfective DAVAT

past

500

92% ipf pf

300

92% 56%

94%

47%

78% 83%

100

98% 41%

35%

0

absolute number of tokens

Forms and complement aspect

inf.

part. imper. non−past perfective DAT

past

inf.

part. imper. non−past imperfective DAVAT

past

Table 4. Forms of interpersonal permissive da(va)t and negation and complement aspect. In general, negation dominates, uniformly so across imperfective forms of da(va)t (p = .86), but not across forms of dat’ (p < 0.0005), where infinitives and imperatives deviate. Complement aspect is more varied, but generally correlates with matrix aspect (see also next table).

56 da(va)t+inf in Russian

matrix perf perf imperf. imperf.

complement perf imperf. perf imperf.

abs 1,374 143 479 349 2,345

rel 59% 6% 20% 15% 100%

of which pos neg 682 (50%) 692 (50%) 62 (43%) 81 (57%) 83 (17%) 396 (83%) 58 (17%) 291 (83%) 885 (38%) 1,460 (62%)

DAVAT Aspect dat 81

ipf

davat

62

ipf pf Infinitive Aspect

682

pf

neg

291

692

Polarity

396

pos

58

83

Table 5. Matrix and complement aspect and negation, combined view. The mosaic plot clearly shows the association of imperfective aspect and polarity (right and left half of upper and lower part, respectively) and the covariance of matrix and complement aspect (horizontal split in the four quarters).

Semasiological description of permissive da(va)t in Russian

57

However, figures for the perfective imperative are not likely to be distorted. This form is exceptional in two respects: first, in contrast to the other forms, the imperative is not linked to negative polarity: it clearly departs from the pattern of the other forms (excluding infinitives) in respect to negation (same distribution with p < 0.0005 and an effect size of Cramer’s V = 0.5). Second, it is very frequent, with 356 of 1,517 amounting to 23% of all perfective instances and to 15% of all interpersonal instances. Note that this is remarkable also in comparison to the Polish construction, where the imperative is not as frequent and patterns with the other forms. Use of the perfective imperative will therefore be analyzed in detail in section 2.2.6.1. As concerns aspect of da(va)t, the perfective form is more frequently used than its imperfective counterpart (65 to 35%). The examination of the combinations of tense and aspect shows that perfective dat’ is more frequent in the past tense than in non-past with 529 to 245 cases, while the imperfective is more often used in the non-past with 261 to 312 cases (p