Unidirectionality in Grammaticalization and Lexical Shift: The Case of English RATHER

Juge, Matthew L.

doi:10.3765/bls.v28i1.3830

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Data like these are suggestive of rather having changed its lexical class from adverb to verb and thus having the ability to license the auxiliary have in examples like (47) (recall Klippenstein's (2012) and Juge's (2002) proposals discussed in section 2.1).…”

Section: Auxiliary Have and Rathermentioning

confidence: 84%

“…This suggests that rather could be analyzed as a lexical verb, rather than an adverb, co-occuring with an auxiliary. In fact, Juge (2002) and Klippenstein (2012) articulate the idea that rather has changed its lexical class from adverb to verb. Klippenstein (2012) cites the earliest verbal uses of rather going back to the 1500s, initially without verbal morphology, as in (7).…”

Section: Historical Development Of Rather Sooner and Bettermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Sinclair 1899: 119) Klippenstein's (2012) data reveal that the historical record of rather includes both adverbial and verbal uses. She argues on this basis that rather has been reanalyzed from adverb to verb, following Juge (2002), who points to the morphological nontransparency of the comparative form rather compared to sooner as one of the potential reasons for the reanalysis. It's interesting to note at this point that if rather indeed is a verb (we return to its potential lexical-verb status in sections 4.1, 4.3 and 5), its history tracks that of better in the sense that both exhibit verbal properties, although rather does so much earlier.…”

Section: Historical Development Of Rather Sooner and Bettermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Constructionist Analysis Of Rather Sooner and Bettermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Sinclair 1899: 119) Klippenstein’s (2012) data reveal that the historical record of rather includes both adverbial and verbal uses. She argues on this basis that rather has been reanalyzed from adverb to verb, following Juge (2002), who points to the morphological nontransparency of the comparative form rather compared to sooner as one of the potential reasons for the reanalysis.…”

Section: Constructionist Analysis Of Rather Sooner and Bettermentioning

confidence: 99%

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English comparative modals and their complements

NYKIEL,

THAISEN

2024

English Language and Linguistics

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English comparative modals are combinations of the adverbs rather, sooner and better with an auxiliary. There is recent consensus that the comparative modals rather and sooner have over time developed a different syntax and semantics than better. However, potential differences in the syntax of rather and sooner with respect to patterns of complementation haven’t been explored. This article reports the results of a corpus study of these two modals and finds that rather patterns like object-raising verbs, allowing a range of complements that are unavailable for sooner. Our analysis of these patterns draws on recent work in the Construction Grammar framework, with forays into its formal implementation, Sign-Based Construction Grammar, and we propose that rather differs from sooner in that it constitutes a micro-construction whose features are licensed by both the Modal Construction and the Object-Raising Construction, the latter a subtype of the Transitive Construction.

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Section: Auxiliary Have and Rathermentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Historical Development Of Rather Sooner and Bettermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Historical Development Of Rather Sooner and Bettermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Constructionist Analysis Of Rather Sooner and Bettermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Constructionist Analysis Of Rather Sooner and Bettermentioning

confidence: 99%

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English comparative modals and their complements

NYKIEL,

THAISEN

2024

English Language and Linguistics

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The correspondence problem in syntactic reconstruction

Walkden¹

2013

DIA

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While considerable swathes of the phonology and morphology of protolanguages have been reconstructed using the comparative method, syntax has lagged behind. Jeffers (1976) and , among others, have questioned whether syntax can be reconstructed at all, claiming that a fundamental problem exists in applying the techniques of phonological reconstruction to syntax. Others, such as Harris & Campbell (1995) and, following them, Barðdal & Eythórsson (2012), have claimed that the problem does not arise in their frameworks. This paper critically examines the isomorphism between phonological and syntactic reconstruction, made possible by an 'item-based' view of syntactic variation as assumed within Minimalist theories of syntax as well as Construction Grammar and others. A case study dealing with the 'middle voice' suffix -sk in early North Germanic is presented in support of the approach. While the conclusion drawn is not as pessimistic as that of , it is argued that the 'correspondence problem' is real and that reconstruction of syntax is therefore necessarily more difficult, and speculative, than that of phonology.

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Microvariation in verbal rather

Wood

2024

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This paper uses survey results to analyze patterns of judgments across different versions of the non-standard verbal use of the word rather, which can take participial morphology, as in rathered. Across numerous possible instantiations of the construction, there appear to be in fact a quite limited number of grammars, which are generated by an implicational hierarchy of functional heads, along with the availability of a silent verb have. The overall picture supports several broader conclusions. First, bare-infinitive–selecting verbs are nearly “closed class” because they have special syntactic properties that go beyond semantic or even syntactic selection: they must value the temporal verbal features of the embedded verb, or else provide a structural context for such valuation. Second, silent verbs can be licensed by head-moving to a modal head in the extended projection. This movement is freely available, but silence demands recoverability, which limits its application only to certain verbs, and certain uses/meanings of those verbs. Third, in addition to previously known configurations for building parasitic participle constructions, movement of a lower verb to a higher verb can extend the phase of the lower verb and lead to its silence. Fourth, the distribution of rather suggests that volitional meaning is not a primitive, but is constructed from smaller primitives. Finally, microvariation reveals a tight connection among logically distinct functional heads, suggesting that they are not acquired independently of each other, but interact in significant ways.

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Unidirectionality in Grammaticalization and Lexical Shift: The Case of English RATHER

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

English comparative modals and their complements

English comparative modals and their complements

The correspondence problem in syntactic reconstruction

Microvariation in verbal rather

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