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2010 | 46 | 1 | 27-49

Article title

Motivating Certain Variation Patterns in Degree Constructions: Semantics Meets Grammaticalization

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Selected contents from this journal

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EN

Abstracts

EN
We analyze patterns of variation in degree constructions as ultimately semantically motivated (Beck et al. 2004);> more precisely, as rooted at the (structured) level of logical form via a parameter based on binding. The paper pursues two related objectives. First, we complement the sharp distinction between languages like Japanese vs. English with a case of a language that seems to be parametrically intermediate. We suggest that Modern Romanian is sensitive to largely the same configurations which are conspicuous in the Japanese/English split, but that it marks the relevant dependencies overtly. Second, we probe for the grammaticalization process of the pertinent functional items involved in marking degree dependencies by conducting a diachronic pilot study. In this part of the article, we analyze data from (literary) Old Romanian. We investigate the degree constructions at this stage of the language in preliminary fashion and point out that they display a particularly instable situation with regard to the diagnostics of the degree parameter discussed, a factor which may have enhanced the grammaticalization of the particular strategies under discussion and hence co-motivates the apparently idiosyncratic current distribution in the language.

Publisher

Year

Volume

46

Issue

1

Pages

27-49

Physical description

Dates

published
2010-03-01
online
2010-05-04

Contributors

author
  • University of Tübingen

References

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Document Type

Publication order reference

Identifiers

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.doi-10_2478_v10010-010-0002-x
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