The semantic and pragmatic underpinnings of grammaticalization paths: The progressive to imperfective shift

This paper offers an analysis of a robustly attested semantic change in which progressive markers &#8220;spontaneously&#8221; emerge in languages, become entrenched in the grammatical system, and diachronically generalize by turning into imperfective markers. The pattern is cyclic in that the generalization is often followed by a re-emergence of new progressive markers. The analysis has a semantic component that characterizes the relation between the progressive and imperfective operators as a privative semantic contrast. Its dynamic component rests on the proposal that imperfective and progressive sentences crucially distinguish between two kinds of inquiries: phenomenal and structural inquiries (Goldsmith & Woisetschlaeger 1982). The trajectory &mdash; consisting of the recruitment of a progressive form, its categorical use in phenomenal inquiries, and its generalization to imperfective meaning &mdash; is modeled within the framework of Evolutionary Game Theory. The diachronic path is reconstructed as a cyclic pattern in which alternative communication strategies rise and fall in dominance over time due to the differences in communicative success and learnability associated with them. <a href="http://semantics-online.org/sp-bib/deo-2015-impf.bib">BibTeX info</a>

Abstract licence: CC BY

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