Exaptation, Refunctionalization, Decapitalization—BE + Past Participle with Intransitive Verbs in Mediaeval and Early Modern Spanish
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. BE + Past Participle—A Criterion for Unaccusativity?
(1) | Et | eillos | aun, | no | Heran | llegados, | qua|ndo | vino | |||
and | They | yet | Not | be.pst.ipfv.3pl | arrive.ptcp.m.pl | when | come.pst.pfv.3sg | ||||
al | rey | mandado | que | Absalon | matara | a | todos | los | Hijos | ||
to.the | king | message | that | Absalon | kill.pst.ipfv.sbj.3sg | to | all | the | sons | ||
‘And they had not yet arrived, when the King received a message which said that Absalon was killing all of the sons’ (Bible E8/6, 13th c., see Rosemeyer 2015, p. 234) |
(2) | Quando | el | ouo | fablado | folgo | el | espiritu | Deillo |
When | he | have.pst.pfv.3sg | speak.ptcp.m.sg | rejoice.pst.pfv.3sg | the | spirit | of.him | |
‘When he had spoken, he was happy’ (Bible E8/6, 13th c., see Rosemeyer 2015) |
3. ESSE + Past Participle < SER + Past Participle
Le perfectum […] correspond en gros à la valeur du parfait grec indiquant le résultat acquis d’un procès et à celle de l’aorist grec ; il recouvre à la fois l’un et l’autre, sans avoir la valeur propre de chacun des deux : son rôle est d’indiquer le procès accompli.
(3) | Prouecta | aetate | mortua | est |
move.forward.ptcp.f.sg.abl | age.abl | die.ptcp.f.sg | be.prs.3sg | |
‘Being aged, she died’ (Cicero, Tusculanarum disputationum libri quinque) |
(4) | Ella | es | Muerta | de | un | mal | que | tenía |
She | be.prs.3s | die.ptcp.f.sg | from | A | illness | that | have.pst.ipfv.3sg | |
‘She has died from an illness that she had’ (CORDE, López de Tortajada 1646)7 |
(5) | La | Bestia | no | es | muerta | por culpa | De | ningun |
The | Beast | not | be.prs.3s | die.ptcp.f.sg | because | of | no | |
omne | mas | por | enfermedat | que | le | abino | ||
man | but | by | illness | that | him | come.to..pst.pfv.3sg | ||
‘The beast is not dead because of a man but because of an illness that came to him’ (CORDE, Fuero de Teruel, c. 1300) |
4. Discontinuity
(6) | amatus sum |
a. ‘I was loved/I have been loved’ (passive) | |
b. ‘I loved/have loved’ (active) (= amavi, active perfect) | |
c. ‘I am beloved’ (amatus = adjective; predicative construction) | |
d. ‘I am (being) loved’ (= amor) | |
(cf. Cennamo 2008, p. 121) |
(7) | puellam amata(m) est |
a. ‘The girl has loved’ (puellam = A) | |
b. ‘She has loved the girl’ (puellam = U) | |
c. ‘The girl was/has been loved’ (puellam = U) | |
d. ‘The girl is (being) loved’ (puellam = U) | |
(cf. Cennamo 2008, p. 123) |
5. Exaptation, Refunctionalization, Decapitalization
Whilst the original functional distinctions disappear, the formal oppositions that used to express them seem to retain a vestige of abstract content—they become, in the terminology introduced earlier, skeuomorphy, not junk—and, where one of the items is discarded or the opposition assumes a new function, it is this vestigial content that seems to determine what developments take place.
Use of the term ‘capitalization’ is an attempt to label the historical process by which a linguistic feature which already exists in a language comes to be substantially exploited for wider purposes, sometimes simply making overt distinctions which were previously covert but sometimes apparently creating new expressive possibilities.
6. Conclusions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
References
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1 | As Jacob (1994) pointed out, Herzog (1910, p. 136) has commented on the surprising fact that the use of the construction BE + past participle in the Mediaeval Romance languages seems to be a functional regression compared to its Latin origin. |
2 | Real Academia Española Corpus diacrónico del español. [http://corpus.rae.es/cordenet.html]. |
3 | This is not the place to give an exhaustive résumé of the discussion on ‘unaccusativity’. See Levin and Hovav (1995); Alexiadou et al. (2004, eds.); Bentley and Eythórsson (2004); Mackenzie (2006). |
4 | |
5 | |
6 | See Ramos Guerreira (2009) for a current overview of the functions of the Latin Perfect. The basic assumptions of Meillet and Vendryes (1924) are still valid. |
7 | |
8 | We will understand ‘reanalysis’ as “a mechanism which changes the underlying structure of a syntactic pattern and which does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface manifestation” (Harris and Campbell 1995, p. 61, the definition goes back to (Langacker 1977)). |
9 | |
10 | By “E-Perfect” Mackenzie (2006) refers to a BE + past participle construction. See also Legendre and Sorace’s (2003) use illustrated in Table 1. |
11 | The formulation is misleading. Mackenzie focusses on the form, not on the function. He refers to the existence of an ESSE + participle construction of these verbs in Mediaeval Romance that formally seem to continue the deponent-style analytic perfect without having this function (any more). |
12 | |
13 | E refers to a BE + past participle construction, A to a HAVE + past participle construction. |
14 | It is interesting to note that Cennamo (2008, p. 132) suggests on the basis of Old Neapolitan data that change of location is rather a peripheral than a core category of unaccusativity. On the one hand, this confirms the findings of Mateu (2009) and Rosemeyer (2014) for Old Spanish, on the other hand in seems to indicate that in Old Neapolitan the reorganization of BE-selection we find in Early Modern Spanish and 17th to 19th Century French did not take place. |
15 | We find this construction in Classical Latin as well as in Modern French, Italian, English or German. Modern Spanish, however, uses estar (<STARE) as a copula. See Pountain (2000) for an account of the process that led to the functional extension of ESTAR + past participle substituting SER + past participle as a resultative construction. |
16 | |
17 | I refer to RRG macroroles (actor and undergoer) to indicate semantic functions (see Van Valin 2005). Cennamo (2008) uses the formalism common in typological studies (O/SO and A) in an equivalent way. |
18 | An anonymous reviewer criticised that my argumentation depends too much on the works of Cennamo and the references she adduces. However, as Latinists confirmed to me, her references are valid and even more current studies of Latin Grammar, such as Baños Baños (2009), do not contradict her findings. Since my claim in this paper is primarily a theoretical one, this is not the place to add wider bibliographic and empirical support to confirm her findings. See Drinka (2017, pp. 139–40) for a recent affirmative summary of Cennamo (2008). |
19 | I use the term ‘defunctionalization’ in line with Smith (2011, p. 269) as “the loss of value or function of an opposition.” |
20 | I will follow Narrog (2007, p. 3) who considers reanalysis a more powerful mechanism that include grammaticalization and other systematic processes of grammatical change. |
21 | A typical example are feathers, originally thermoregulatory devices of warm-blooded proto-birds, that only later were capitalised for flight (Lass 1990, p. 80). |
22 | Of course, passive constructions of transitive verbs could have a resultative meaning, too. |
23 | |
24 | However, some forms were substituted by forms of sedere. |
25 | In my opinion, this is not the core of the problem. Aesthetic aspects should not be neglected in language history. |
Auxiliary | Selected | Verb Classes |
---|---|---|
French | Italian | |
E13 | E | Change of location: arrivare/arriver, venire/venire and so forth. |
Change of state | ||
E | E | a. Change of condition: morire/mourir, etc. |
E* | E | b. Appearance: apparire/apparaître, etc. |
c. Indefinite change in a particular direction: | ||
E* | E | salire/monter, scendere/descendre |
A | E* | appassire/faner, peggiorare/empirer, etc. |
A | E* | Continuation of pre-existing state: durare/durer, etc. |
Existence of state: | ||
A | E | a. essere/être |
A | E* | b. esistere/exister, bastare/suffire à |
Uncontrolled processes | ||
A | A* | a. Emission: risuonare/résonner, etc. |
A | A | b. Bodily functions: sudare/suer, etc. |
A | A* | c. Involuntary actions: tremare, trembler, etc. |
A | A* | Motional controlled processes: nuotare/nager, etc. |
A | A | Non-motional controlled processes: lavorare/travailler, etc. |
Phase 1 | Latin mortuus est (perfect) |
Phase 2 | Early Romance morz est, muetro es and so on (copula-adjective) |
Phase 3 | Modern Romance est mort, ha muerto and so on (perfect) |
Classical Latin | Late Latin | Mediaeval Spanish | Early Modern Spanish |
---|---|---|---|
ESSE + PtcP | ESSE + PtcP | SER + PtcP | SER + PtcP |
(U-marking) (Resultative) Anterior Aorist | Defunctionalization? | U-Marking Resultative (Anterior) | U-Marking Anterior |
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Kailuweit, R. Exaptation, Refunctionalization, Decapitalization—BE + Past Participle with Intransitive Verbs in Mediaeval and Early Modern Spanish. Languages 2018, 3, 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3040043
Kailuweit R. Exaptation, Refunctionalization, Decapitalization—BE + Past Participle with Intransitive Verbs in Mediaeval and Early Modern Spanish. Languages. 2018; 3(4):43. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3040043
Chicago/Turabian StyleKailuweit, Rolf. 2018. "Exaptation, Refunctionalization, Decapitalization—BE + Past Participle with Intransitive Verbs in Mediaeval and Early Modern Spanish" Languages 3, no. 4: 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3040043
APA StyleKailuweit, R. (2018). Exaptation, Refunctionalization, Decapitalization—BE + Past Participle with Intransitive Verbs in Mediaeval and Early Modern Spanish. Languages, 3(4), 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3040043