Paradigm formation: Changes of function and structure in German and Danish mood systems

Abstract

Recent studies in semantic change have agendas in common with the theory of grammaticalization and thus focus on processes of central interest to grammaticalization theory, namely generalization, bleaching and subjectification. One typical outcome of such processes is the addition of new diachronic meanings (“layering”), leading to a content side that involves more and more sprawling polysemic clusters. The study of morphological changes, however, provides instances of many other types of processes. This article discusses two such types: (1) a regrammation process, namely a change in paradigmatic organization, and (2) a specification of meaning, i.e. reduction rather than proliferation of meaning variants. Both will be illustrated with reference to the development of mood in German: it is a split from what was still in Middle High German one inflectional mood paradigm into three different mood paradigms in the modern standard High German language – and each of the separate paradigms involve a specification rather than proliferation in meaning. Our focus is on the characterization of semantic structure, but as in any usage-based grammatical model, the relation between structure and function is also considered. Former main functions of the subjunctive are promoted to the rank of structurally distinctive features between the modern paradigms, but the modern paradigm structure also contains content variation that was not grammaticalized in the older language – while other forms of content variation remains a matter of context of use. A comparison is offered with Middle Danish (showing a similar split of the older paradigm) and Modern Danish (the reverse process: loss of the distinction between the tense and mood paradigms). Again, regrammation processes like the ones studied show the importance of specification in semantic change and also of the importance of fine-grained language-specific analysis of grammatical content and its paradigmatic organization.

Keywords::

• grammaticalization
• modality
• mood
• regrammation
• German
• Danish

Notes

² A substance category is a true interlinguistic category: a highly abstract semantic concept devoid of specific form/content design, thus a pure interlinguistic metacategory. However, it matches linguistic signs of various designs and parts of speech in specific languages.

³ All Middle High German examples are from Moser and Schröbler (1969), Schröbler's chapters on syntax.

⁴ Epistemic presents are hard to find. A purely hypothetical preterite is found in Old Saxon:

Wari         it nu    thin willio that

be-PRT.SBJ.3SG    it now    your will that …

‘Say it was your will now …’

Behaghel 1924, 238

It would seem probable that Old Saxon could have formed a parallel present subjunctive, but we cannot claim this for Middle High German.

⁵ ‘Yet I have been told for certain that a hero will stay (subjunctive form won) unaffected in pagan lands … he is to be counted as my brother’

⁶ ‘To you somebody said that I were (subjunctive form sî) no man of noble descent … Whoever he is: he lied’.

⁷ The quotational use seems to be of old in German, compare from Old Saxon (Holthausen 1899, 206):

hiet skrīban that           that wāri

order-PRT.IND.3SG to write that    this be.PRT-SBJ.3SG

kuning Judeono

king Jews-GEN

‘he ordered to write that this was the king of Jews’

⁸ The second finge matches fa (PRS.SBJ.SG); the first finge matches fa (PRS.IND.1SG) or far (PRS.IND.SG): iac fa/far (IND) ey lifvat vtan iac fa (SBJ) then swennin.

⁹ When in subordinate clauses it is always directive, never epistemic, see Bjerrum (1968, 57).

¹⁰ Instances of the present perfect are very rare.

¹¹ At this point, there is a contrast between subjunctives I and II; subjunctive II is often used to express non-feasible wishes as wäre die Welt bloß besser (‘I wish the world were better’).

¹² Syncretisms of the past forms of the indicative and the subjunctive are extensive, especially with the weak verbs. Such syncretisms are often replaced by periphrastic forms containing the verb werden, ‘to become’, which has marked past subjunctive expressions, compare (4): würde ausfallen.

¹³ Our analysis is in keeping with Zifonun (1997, 1756): “Nur die Proposition der Originaläußerung ist in indirekter Redewiedergabe wörtlich umsetzbar, dagegen muß die vollzogene Sprechhandlung beschrieben werden; diese Sprechhandlungsbeschreibung, die ja stets eine Interpretation der ursprünglichen Originaläußerung darstellt, ist als Referatanzeige in der indirekten Redewiedergabe Teil des Indirektheitskontextes für die referierte Proposition.”

‘Only the proposition of the original statement can be transformed literally into an indirect version of the statement; the performed speech act, however, must be described; this description of the speech act is always an interpretation of the original statement. Being a quotation announcement of the indirect rendering of the statement, it is part of the contextual indirectness of the quoted proposition.’

¹ The Leipzig Glossing Rules are followed, except that we use PRT (preterite) and PRTPRF (preterite perfect) instead of PST (past) and PSTPRF. For subjunctive we use SBJ, not SBJV.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen

Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen is a senior research fellow in German and Dutch at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her main interests are syntax, comparative linguistics, functional linguistics in general, and text linguistics with numerous papers in these areas.

Lars Heltoft

Lars Heltoft is professor of Danish language and linguistics at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is co-author of Grammatik over det Danske Sprog [Grammar of the Danish Language] (2011; with Erik Hansen) and co-author of Connecting Grammaticalisation (John Benjamins 2011; with Jens Nørgård-Sørensen and Lene Schøsler). He has written numerous articles on grammaticalisation and Danish grammar.