Meaning change in the Dutch core modals: (Inter)subjectification in a grammatical paradigm

Abstract

This article presents a corpus-based analysis of the semantic developments of the three most "prototypical" Dutch modals, kunnen 'can', mogen 'may', and moeten 'must'. It focuses on the implications for current concepts of (inter) subjectification. The three modals turn out not to behave in a uniform way and to show different diachronic profiles: kunnen and mogen do but moeten does not show clear processes of (inter)subjectification, while kunnen is a much "younger" modal than mogen and moeten. In terms of paths of semantic change, the investigation shows that evolutions toward more (inter)subjective meanings are often not linear. Even if they predominantly emerge from one other meaning, new meanings can have secondary sources. Furthermore, evolutions often happen in parallel, with one specific meaning serving as the source for several others (e.g., deontic, epistemic/evidential, and directive meanings typically all evolve in parallel from a dynamic modal meaning).

On the origins of the epistemic, evidential, and subjectivity meanings in the mental state predicates

“…But the dimension is also coded by independent markers (cf. Nuyts 2012Nuyts , 2014, including Dutch denken as in (9) (or English think in equivalent uses). 5 So, in order to avoid confusion, note that an epistemic use of denken of the kind in ( 6) is also subjective in this analysis.…”

“… Nuyts (2001b) considered this dimension a subtype of evidentiality, but there are strong arguments against this analysis (seeNuyts 2012Nuyts , 2014Nuyts , 2017.…”

“…In this paper we only offer data for written PDD. Janssens &Nuyts (2014) and Janssens (2015) also analyze spoken PDD data, but for the present purpose these do not bring significant new insights, hence they are omitted for reasons of space.8 The problem of sample size applies especially for OD, due to the fact that there are very few texts remaining from this period.…”

“…This shows that the traditional concept of the typical diachronic pathway of the modal meanings, as found in the modal auxiliaries in many languages, viz. 'objective > dynamic > deontic > epistemic', cannot be generalized (even for the modals it is not entirely unproblematic, though; seeByloo & Nuyts 2014). The epistemic meaning may have entirely different origins, not involving any other modal meanings.…”