Failed grammaticalisation of a phrase signifying “(n)ever” Eric Hoekstra & Bouke Slofstra

Failed grammaticalisation of a phrase signifying “(n)ever”

Eric Hoekstra & Bouke Slofstra

Current Trends in Grammaticalization Research 2009

Hoekstra & Slofstra 2

The data

• Investigate the rise and fall of the phrase syn levenhis life => ‘ever’

syn leven net

his life not => ‘never’

• Data from 17-18th century Frisian (Middle Frisian).


The theoretical question

• Why didn’t this phrase grammaticalise?

• Why did it lose out against its rivals oait / noait ‘ever/never’.


Language Corpus Middle Frisian

• Around 1 million of words• Tagged for all types of agreement • Lemmatised• Exhaustive• Beta-version internally available • Freely available through www as of 2010• Presentation at Euralex 2010, Leeuwarden

http://www.euralex.nl/


Three competitors meaning ‘ever / never’ in 17-18th century Frisian

• Ea / Nea

• Oait / Noait

• Syn leven / Syn leven nethis life / his life not‘ever / never’


Ea / Nea

• Derives from Old Frisian a / na.

• Last attested 1702 (ea), 1718 (nea).

• Basically absent in 18th century.

• Found again from 1830 onwards.

• Brought back to life by the Frisian Language movement

• Nowadays still written, sometimes heard, called boekjefrysk ‘Frisian from a book’.


Oait / Noait

• Homophonous to Dutch ooit / nooit

• Borrowed from Dutch

• First attested 1702 (oait), 1672 (noait)

• Dutch ooit / nooit has ousted older Dutch ie / nie, the cognates of Frisian ea / nea


Dutch ooit / nooit ousts Frisian ea/nea:

(N)EA roughly 17th century

(N)OAIT roughly 18th century


Syn leven / Syn leven net

It comes in two forms.

Dutch form:Syn leven / Syn leven netHis life / His life not ‘ever/never’

Frisian form:Syn libben / Syn libben net


Syn leven (net) is a loan from Dutch

Argument 1 is phonological: intervocalic /v/ does not occur in native MF words after a mid or a high vowel


Syn leven (net) is a loan from Dutch (argument 2)

• Argument 2syn leven (net) first attested 1614syn libben (net) first attested 1675

• So the Frisian form is a relexification of the Dutch form, testifying to some language vitality.


Syn leven (net) is a loan from Dutch (argument 3)

• Outside the construction syn leven (net), the word leven doesn’t occur.

• Outside the construction syn libben (net), the word libben occurs + 400 times.

• => The word leven was not borrowed. Only the construction syn leven (net) as a whole was, in the meaning ‘(n)ever’.


Overview of syntactic environments under investigation

• Rhetorical questions• Comparative relative ‘so ... like...’.• Exclamative• Clauses with a clausal negation• In the scope of a negative DP such as nobody• In the scope of an excluding head such as if,

before, deny.• Relative clauses (free relative clauses)


Rhetorical questions

Wa het sijn libben herd fen socke bottewho has his life heard of such terribledingen (1711)things

‘Who ever heard of such terrible things?’

Frequency leven + libben: (4+12) = 16


Comparative relative ‘so/such ... as...’

It is zok maol praat az ik mijn leven it is such crazy talk as I my lifeheard hab! (1779)heard have‘It’s such crazy talk as I never heard in my life.’Frequency leven + libben: (2+1) = 3NB Weak context for NPI


Exclamative (idiomatic)

Nou hab ik mijn leven! … hoe bijtinke now have I my life … how think dij Minschen 't! (1779)those people (of) it‘Well upon my life! … How do those people come to think of it!’

Frequency leven + libben: (2+0) = 2Why is the Dutch form leven used here?


Exclamative features the Dutch form. Why?

• In the source (a play), rethorical uses feature Frisianised ‘libben’.

• => Why is ‘leven’ re-borrowed from Dutch?

• => Because it a new syntactic context, and it is a different, more abstract semantic use!


Clause negation

ick hie t oors mijn leven I would-have it otherwise my lifeneat ljæuwd (1701)not believed‘Otherwise, I’d never have believed it.’

Frequency leven + libben: (19+15) = 34


Zero in the following contexts

• In the scope of a negative DP such as nobodyEA 5:31 (total 36) OAIT 35:95 (130)

• In the scope of an excluding head such as if, before, deny.EA 10:26 OAIT 31:99

• Free / nominal relative clauses EA 14:22 OAIT 11:119


In the scope of a negative DP

Joa zille nin fortriet Oyt syæn, (1755) they will no sadness ever see

=> No syn leven / libben is found in this context.


In the scope of an excluding head such as if, before, deny, alas that.

Dat mij ien koegel reitse (1748)that me a bullet may-hiteiar ik ien slaaf ooit hiet before I a slave ever was-called



Free / nominal relative clauses

Joa trogzieke wis (1755) they search surely het hier ooyt trog toa sieken iswhat here ever through to search is



Zero-contexts for syn libben/leven

Syn leven /

libben

55

EA

36

OAIT

130

Scope of Neg. DP

0 5 35

Excluding Head

0 10 31

Free/nom-inal relative clauses

0 14 11


Non zero-contexts for syn libben/leven

Syn leven /

libben

55

EA

36

OAIT

130

Rethorical Question

16 6 26

Comp Rel + Exclam

5 0 0

Clause Negation 34 0 27


Question

Why didn’t syn leven / libben win out against ea and oait?


(1) Syntactic reason

Syn leven / libben was restricted to three contexts. It could not be used with negative DPs, excluding heads and free / nominal relative clauses – which are good contexts to score a higher frequency.


(2) Semantic reason

All examples with syn leven / libben have a very emphatic interpretation (high degree); as such they are found in rethorical questions, exclamatives and comparative relatives indicating a high degree.


(3) Sociological reason

The expression seems to be associated with low class and spoken language. It is frequent in low comedy, it doesn’t occur in the translation of the psalms of Althuysen.


(4) Another syntactic reason

Syn leven / libben has the structure of:

POSSESSOR + leven / libben

The possessor is in most examples coreferential with the subject (or topic?).


(4) Another syntactic reason continued

Heste dijn libben zok foelbekjen wol heard?

Have-you your life such foulspeech ADV heard?

ick hie it mijn leven næt ljæud/

I would-have it my life net believed

The agreeing possessor blocks further grammaticalisation en lexicalisation of the phrase in to a word (majority of cases).


Grammaticalisation in Sealter Frisian?

• Frisian language family:– North Frisian (near the Danish border)– (West) Frisian (The Netherlands)– East Frisian (near the Dutch border)

• Sealter Frisian only survivor of the East Frisian language, spoken by 2000 people in Sealterlân


Frisian Language Family (map)

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Friesetaalgebied.png)


Grammaticalisation in Sealter Frisian?(continued)

Kramer (1970):silǻǻrge nit > *silarege > *siladege> sien Lääwdoage ‘his life days’

The possessor pronoun is fixed, so the phrase can be reanalysed as a word.


Grammaticalisation in Sealter Frisian?(continued)

• The possessor pronoun is frozen, 3sg, regardless of the ‘antecedent’; hence the phrase can be grammaticalised.

• Native speakers consider silǻǻrge a word.• This confirms reason (4), that the

changing possessor pronoun blocked grammaticalisation in Frisian.

• Incidentally: OE aefre is perhaps derived from a word meaning ‘life’.


To sum up

The phrase syn libben/leven net failed to grammaticalise in 17th and 18th century West-Frisian for a complex of syntactic, semantic and sociological reasons.

Thank you for your attention!


Questions

Questions on any aspect of Frisian:

[email protected]

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]






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Failed grammaticalisation of a phrase signifying “(n)ever” Eric Hoekstra & Bouke Slofstra

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