Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T13:55:48.786Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The fast case: Constructionalization of a Swedish concessive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2014

Peter Andersson
Peter Andersson*
Affiliation:
Department of Swedish, The Swedish Language Bank, Lennart Torstenssongatan 8, 40530 Göteborg, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. peter.andersson@gu.se
Get access

Abstract

The development of grammatical markers has been described from several theoretical perspectives over the last decade: Grammaticalization Theory (Hopper & Traugott 2003, Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991), the Minimalist Program (Roberts & Roussou 2003, van Gelderen 2004), and Lexical-Functional Grammar (Vincent 2001), see also the overview in (Börjars & Vincent 2010). It has recently been addressed in Construction Grammar, where it is argued that a shift towards a constructional perspective on change may yield new insights into the workings of grammaticalization (Bergs & Diewald 2008, Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013, Traugott & Trousdale 2013). This paper should be taken as a contribution to a constructional view on grammaticalization. It is about the rise of the concessive subordinator fast(än) in the history of Swedish occurring in a construction or clause type called universal concessive conditional (Haspelmath & Köning 1998), in Swedish generaliserande bisats (SAG 1999). The Swedish fast, etymologically (and still productively) as an adjective in the meaning ‘steady’, ‘robust’ is used as an intensifier, ‘very’, ‘much’, in early Modern Swedish, eventually established as a concessive marker ‘even if’, ‘although’ in the 18th century. The conventionalization of a concessive inference is highly interesting and may be traced back to specific constructions in the 16th and 17th centuries. On the basis of an extensive corpus study, I analyze the critical contexts and discuss the development as constructional change rather than lexical change, arguing that a remapping between form and function takes place in concessive conditional constructions due to processes of inferencing and mismatch.

Keywords

concessivesconditionalsconstruction grammarconstructional changeconstructionalizationcorpus linguisticsgrammaticalizationSwedish
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 2: Corpus Linguistics and the Nordic Languages , October 2014 , pp. 141 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

SUB-CORPORA

Bergroth, Hugo. Finlandssvenska. Handledning till undvikande av provinsialismer i tal och skrift. Hfors 1916–17.Google Scholar
Comlumbus, Samuel. Mål-roo eller Roo-mål. 1675.Google Scholar
Dalin, Olof von. Then Swänska Argus. 1732–1734.Google Scholar
Gothus, Petrus Pauli. Een rett christeligh vnderwijsningh om heela menniskiones leffnat här på jordenne. Sthm 1590.Google Scholar
Helige Bernard 13th/14th c.Google Scholar
Hiärne, Urban. Stratonice. 1665.Google Scholar
Horn, Agneta. Beskrivning över min vandringstid. 1657.Google Scholar
Hund, Daniel Hansson. Konung Erik XIV:s krönika 1605. På rim eller uti en visa författad af Daniel Hansson Hund till Romelberg. Efter äldre handskrifter utgifven af Fredrik August Dahlgren. Sthm 1847.Google Scholar
Järteckensboken A Holm A110. Codex Oxenstiernianus. 1385.Google Scholar
Karlskrönikan = Karlskrönikan Holm D 6. 1450.Google Scholar
KubHist = Kungliga bibliotekets historiska korpus. 1750–1925.Google Scholar
Månsson, Peder. Barnabok. 1520.Google Scholar
Petri, Olaus. En Swensk Cröneka af Olavus Petri efter handskrift A (O. Petri Krönika Nr 1, KB). 1530.Google Scholar
Riksdagsakt = Svenska riksdagsakter jämte andra handlingar som höra till statsförfattningens historia under tidehvarfvet 1521–1718. 1ff. Sthm 1887ff.Google Scholar
Riksreg. = Konung Gustaf den förstes registratur. 1–29 (Handlingar rörande Sveriges historia. Serie 1) Sthm 1861–1916Google Scholar
Rudbeckius, Johannes. Beatum regis sceptrum. Thet är: Wälsignat konunga regemente. Vpsala.1615.Google Scholar
Runius, Johan. Prosastycken på svenska. 1710.Google Scholar
St Anna = Legenden om Sankta Anna (1a) enligt Upc C9 c. 1400.Google Scholar
Swart, Peder Andreae. Gustaf I:s krönika. 1560.Google Scholar
SynodA = Svenska synodalakter efter 1500-talets ingång. 1586. 1–2. Uppsala 1903–11.Google Scholar
Yngre Västmannalagen, B. Holm B 57. 1300–1350.Google Scholar

REFERENCES

Adesam, Yvonne, Ahlberg, Malin, Andersson, Peter, Bouma, Gerlof, Forsberg, Markus & Måns, Hulden. 2014. Computer-aided morphology expansion for Old Swedish. In Calzolari, Nicoletta, Choukri, Khalid, Declerck, Thierry, Loftsson, Hrafn, Maegaard, Bente, Mariani, Joseph, Moreno, Asuncion, Odijk, Jan & Piperidis, Stelios (eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 14), Reykjavik 2014, 365–369.Google Scholar
Adesam, Yvonne, Ahlberg, Malin & Bouma, Gerlof. 2012. Bokstaffua, bokstaffwa, bokstafwa, bokstaua, bokstawa. . .Towards lexical link-up for a corpus of Old Swedish. In Jancsary, Jeromy (ed.), Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Proceedings of the LTHist Workshop at Konvens, 2012.Google Scholar
Almquist, Johan Axel. 1861–1916. Konung Gustaf den förstes registratur, vol. 29. Stockholm: Swedish National Archives.Google Scholar
Andersson, Peter. 2009. Force dynamics in the history of Swedish modals. In Zlatev, Jordan, Andren, Mats, Falck, Marlene Johansson & Lundmark, Carita (eds.), Studies in Language and Cognition, 487–504. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Andersson, Peter & Ahlberg, Malin. 2013. Towards automatic tracking of lexical change: Linking historical lexical resources. In Þórhallur Eyþórsson, Lars Borin, Dag Haug & Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson. NEALT Proceedings Series 18, 1–10.Google Scholar
Bergs, Alexander & Diewald, Gabriele. 2008. Constructions and Language Change (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 194). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Borin, Lars, Forsberg, Markus & Roxendal, Johan. 2013. KORP – the corpus infrastructure of Språkbanken. In Calzolari, Nicoletta, Choukri, Khalid, Declerck, Thierry, Doğan, Mehmet Uğur, Maegaard, Bente, Mariani, Joseph, Moreno, Asuncion, Odijk, Jan & Piperidis, Stelios (eds.), Proceedings of LREC 2012, 474–478. Istanbul: ELRA.Google Scholar
Börjars, Kersti & Vincent, Nigel. 2010. Grammaticalization and models of language. In Trousdale & Traugott (eds.), 279–299.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Diewald, Gabriele. 2002. A model for relevant types of contexts in grammaticalization. In Diewald, Gabriele & Wischer, Ilse (eds.), New Reflections on Grammaticalization: International Symposium, Potsdam, 17–19 June, 1999, 3–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Diewald, Gabriele. 2006. Context types in grammaticalization as constructions. In Schönefeld, Doris (ed.), Constructions All Over: Case Studies and Theoretical Implications, special issue of Constructions 1 (7), 1–29.Google Scholar
Eden, Nils. 1912. Konung Gustaf Is krönika/Peder Swart; med inledning och ordförklaringar. Stockholm: Ljus.Google Scholar
Fried, Mirjam & Östman, Jan-Ola. 2004. Historical and intellectual background of Construction Grammar. In Fried, Mirjam & Östman, Jan-Ola (eds.), Construction Grammar: A Cross-linguistic Perspective, 1–10. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. Why is grammaticalization irreversible? Linguistics 37 (6), 1043–1068.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin & König, Ekkehard. 1998. Concessive conditionals in the languages of Europe. In van der Auwera, Johan (ed.), Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology/EUROTYP, 20-3), 563–640. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 2002. On the role of context in grammaticalization. In Wischer, Ilse & Diewald, Gabriel (eds.), New Reflections on Grammaticalization (Typological Studies in Language 49), 83–102. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd, Claudi, Ulrike & Hünnemeyer, Friederike. 1991. Grammaticalization: A Conceptual Framework. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hilpert, Martin. 2008. Where did this future construction come from? A case study of Swedish komma att V. In Bergs & Diewald (eds.), 107–131.Google Scholar
Hilpert, Martin. 2013. Constructional Change in English: Studies in Allomorphy, Word Formation and Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Thomas & Trousdale, Graeme. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2003. Grammaticalization, 2nd edn.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Larsson, Lars-Olof. 2002. Gustav Vasa – landsfader eller tyrann? Stockholm: Prisma.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1982/2002. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. Munich: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 2004. Theory and method in grammaticalization. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 32 (2), 152–187.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Laura A. 2003. Word meaning, sentence meaning, and syntactic meaning. In Cuyckens, Hubert, Dirven, René & Taylor, John R. (eds.), Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics, 163–210. Berlin: De GruyterGoogle Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick N. 1998. Language Form and Language Function. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian. 2010. Grammaticalisation: The clausal hierarchy and semantic bleaching. In Trousdale & Traugott (eds.), 45–73.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian & Roussou, Anna. 2003. Syntactic Change: A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
SAG = Ulf Teleman, Hellberg, Staffan & Andersson, Erik. 1999. Svenska Akademiens grammatik. Stockholm: Nordsteds Ordbok.Google Scholar
SAOB = Ordbok över svenska språket utgiven av Svenska Akademien. Lund 1897–. [In addition to the OSA database http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/.]Google Scholar
Söderwall, Knut Fredrik. 1884–1918. Ordbok Öfver svenska medeltids-språket, vols. I–III & Supplement, vols. IV–V. Lund: Sweden.Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2001. Legitimate counterexamples to unidirectionality. Presented at Freiburg University, 17 October 2001. [www.stanford.edu/~traugott/papers/Freiburg.Unidirect.pdf]Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2008. The grammaticalization of NP of NP patterns. In Bergs & Diewald (eds.), 23–45.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Dasher, Robert B.. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme. 2013. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 6). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (eds). 2010. Gradience, Gradualness, and Grammaticalization. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
van der Auwera, Johan & Plungian, Vladimir A.. 1998. Modality's semantic map. Linguistic Typology 2 (1), 79–124.Google Scholar
van Gelderen, Elly. 2004. Grammaticalization as Economy (Linguistik Aktuell 71). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Vincent, Nigel. 2001. LFG as a model for syntactic change. In Miriam Butt & King, Tracy Holloway (eds.), Time over Matter: Diachronic Perspectives on Morphosyntax, 1–42. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Wessén, Elias. 1965. Svensk språkhistoria III. Grundlinjer till en historisk syntax. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar