{"id":1526,"date":"2011-04-21T22:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T20:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1526"},"modified":"2011-04-04T10:06:09","modified_gmt":"2011-04-04T08:06:09","slug":"current-trends-in-diachronic-semantics-and-pragmatics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1526","title":{"rendered":"Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics"},"content":{"rendered":"
Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics<\/strong>. Ed. by Maj-Britt Mosegaard<\/strong> Hansen<\/strong> and Jacqueline Visconti<\/strong>. (Studies in pragmatics 7.) Bingley, UK: Emerald Group, 2009. Pp. ix, 302. ISBN 9781849506779<\/a>. $144.95 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Anish Koshy<\/strong><\/a>, The English & Foreign Languages University, India<\/em><\/p>\n

This volume has fifteen papers, which originated in a 2007 Workshop on Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics, held in Montreal. The papers deal with general theoretical as well as language-specific issues.<\/p>\n

In the introductory paper, \u2018Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics\u2019, the editors summarize the individual contributions in the book and discuss how pragmatic factors influence semantic change and the conventionalization of conversational implicatures. In \u2018APO: Avoid pragmatic overload\u2019, Regine Eckardt<\/strong> discusses semantic change in English even<\/em>, German fast<\/em> \u2018almost\u2019 and selbst<\/em> \u2018even\u2019, and Italian perfino<\/em> \u2018even\u2019, due to pragmatic overload on the hearer, when confronted with a usage that makes accommodation impossible.<\/p>\n

Ulrich Detges<\/strong> and Richard Waltereit<\/strong> trace the diachronic evolution of Spanish bien<\/em> (a discourse marker) and French bien<\/em> (a modal particle) in terms of distinct discourse pragmatic strategies. In \u2018Context sensitive changes: The development of the affirmative markers godt<\/em> \u2018good\u2019 and vel<\/em> \u2018well\u2019 in Danish\u2019,\u00a0 Eva Skafte Jensen<\/strong> analyzes the evolution of Danish affirmative markers as an instance of the conventionalizing of conversational implicature. She posits that these markers developed due to word order and the semantic context.<\/p>\n

Kate Beeching<\/strong> explains the evolution of particles like French quand m\u00eame<\/em> \u2018after all\u2019, English though<\/em>, Scottish but<\/em>, and German aber<\/em> \u2018but, at all\u2019, from a concessive or adversative conjunction to a hedging and boosting particle in her article, \u2018Procatalepsis and the etymology of hedging and boosting particles\u2019. In \u2018Central\/peripheral functions of allora<\/em> and \u201coverall pragmatic configuration\u201d: A diachronic perspective\u2019, Carla Bazzanella <\/strong>and Johanna Miecznikowski <\/strong>trace the diachronic evolution of Italian allora<\/em> \u2018so, then\u2019 from being a temporal adverb of simultaneity and consecution to becoming a discourse marker.<\/p>\n

Maria Estell\u00e9s<\/strong> discusses the role that paradigmatic relations have played in the grammaticalization of Spanish digressive markers por cierto<\/em> \u2018certainly\u2019and a prop\u00f3sito<\/em> \u2018by the way\u2019. Magdalena Romera<\/strong>\u2019s \u2018The multiple origin of es que<\/em> in Modern Spanish: Diachronic evidence\u2019, traces the diachronic development of Spanish es que<\/em> \u2018it is that\u2019constructions, as it has come to be used as a function of elaboration and reinterpretation. Bethwyn Evans<\/strong> examines the evolution of the Marovo aspect\/mood marker ma<\/em> to a discourse connective particle in \u2018From aspect\/mood marker to discourse particle: Reconstructing syntactic and semantic change\u2019. Gabriele Diewald<\/strong>, Marijana Kresic<\/strong>, and Elena Smirnova <\/strong>trace the diachronic evolution of German evidentials and modal particles to demonstrate that different particles may share the same channels in grammaticalization.<\/p>\n

Mario Squartini<\/strong>, in \u2018Evidentiality, epistemicity, and their diachronic connections to non-factuality\u2019, discusses the diachronic correlations between evidentiality and epistemicity in several Romance language verb forms, including hearsay markers and conditionals. Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen<\/strong> suggests the diachronic evolution of the French negation ne\u2026pas<\/em> to have been largely governed by discourse-functional constraints in Janus-faced contexts in \u2018The grammaticalization of negative reinforcers in Old and Middle French: A discourse-functional approach\u2019. \u2018A roots journey of a French preposition\u2019 by Silvia Adler<\/strong> and Maria Asnes<\/strong> shows that the multiple readings of the French preposition jus qu\u2019\u00e0<\/em> \u2018until\u2019 does not involve any evolution from a concrete core to other abstract meanings.<\/p>\n

Elke Gehweiler<\/strong> discusses the diachronic development of the English negative intensifier mere<\/em> from a privative adjective due to a process of grammaticalization and subjectification. The final paper, \u2018The origin of semantic change in discourse tradition: A case study\u2019 by Katerina Stathi<\/strong>, discusses the role of discourse traditions or contexts in semantic and pragmatic change through the German construction geh\u00f6ren + participle II<\/em> \u2018persistence of\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n

This collection closely examines how meanings change by focusing on different aspects, such as the role of the speaker and listener and interactional factors. Altogether, each paper contributes to questioning many of the accepted theoretical positions and offers insightful analyses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics. Ed. by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti. (Studies in pragmatics 7.) Bingley, UK: Emerald Group, 2009. Pp. ix, 302. ISBN 9781849506779. $144.95 (Hb). Reviewed by Anish Koshy, The English & Foreign Languages University, India This volume has fifteen papers, which originated in a 2007 Workshop on Diachronic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}