An outline of grammatical evolution

Conclusions

The evolutionary pathways sketched above may have conveyed the impression that human languages are becoming increasingly more grammaticalized, that is, grammatically more complex.¹ However, on the basis of the materials we have worked with we are not justified to say that this is really the case; Modern English is demonstrably no more morphologically complex than its predecessor Old English. There are a number of reasons for this fact. First, grammaticalization need not, and frequently does not, run through the entire range of pathways such as the ones sketched in Figure 2.1 in “A scenario of evolution”; it can be arrested at any point in time. Second, functional categories may fall into disuse at any stage of their development. And third, and most importantly, once functional categories have reached the final stages of development, that is, layer VI and beyond, they have lost most of their meaning (desemanticization) and phonetic substance (erosion), and they may subsequently be given up entirely, in accordance with the scale of morphological development sketched in (68). This is what happened to the system of case inflections on the way from Old English to Modern English. To be sure, loss can be made up for by new grammaticalization processes, for example by adpositions taking over the functions of lost case inflections, thereby giving the impression of a cyclic development (see “On uniformitarianism”); but this is by no means always the case. To conclude, the evolutionary network described, does not allow us to tell whether a given language, or human language in general, is heading towards a higher or a lower degree of grammatical complexity.

The main goal was to apply the methodology of grammaticalization theory to the reconstruction of salient pathways of grammatical change. In doing so, we had to reduce the complex—and to some extent still poorly understood—structure of conceptual relations underlying grammaticalization processes to a few salient pathways. The outcome was a scenario of grammatical evolution described in Figure 2.1 in “A scenario of evolution “ in the form of a network.² There are two kinds of implications that this scenario has for our understanding of language.

The first kind is synchronic in nature. It allows us, on the one hand, to understand why there are a number of homophonous structures in the languages of the world that, on a synchronic analysis, appear to be unmotivated. Thus, it would seem possible to account for the fact that the English item that has a number of contrasting uses, including those of a demonstrative, a relative clause marker, and a complementizer. On the basis of the developments sketched above we argue that the three are interrelated in a principled way: the latter two are derived from the former via the pathways Demonstrative > relative clause marker and Demonstrative > complementizer. In a similar fashion, we are able to hypothesize that the different uses of the English item after as an adverb, an adposition, and an (adverbial clause) subordinator is consistent with the pathways Adverb > adposition and Adverb > subordinator. In other words, the different developments summarized in Figure 2.1 in “A scenario of evolution “may surface in the synchronic structure of a given language in the form of polysemous (or homophonous) forms belonging to different functional categories.

On the other hand, the findings made also allow for some generalizations on the structure of linguistic categories as we find them in modern languages. A number of different taxonomies of linguistic categories have been proposed, and with the present discussion we do not wish to question the validity of any of these taxonomies. However, we argue that with reference to their evolutionary behavior, categories can be related to one another in a principled way, and the resulting structure of relationship does not necessarily match that proposed by some authors. For example, in some schools of linguistics, the following four taxa are treated as major lexical categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adpositions (¼ ‘‘prepositions’’). While there is solid syntactic evidence to support this taxonomy, such a treatment is not without problems. One problem relates to the fact that there are quite a number of languages that lack adjectives. Another problem concerns the fact that there are some properties distinguishing these categories. According to the observations made above, adjectives and, more conspicuously, adpositions do not belong to the same layer of grammaticalization as nouns and verbs. While the basis of our framework is strictly diachronic, grammaticalization theory predicts that this difference is also reflected in the synchronic structure of the taxa concerned. Ignoring the notoriously controversial status of adjectives, we will expect that on account of their relative degree of grammaticalization, adpositions differ drastically from nouns and verbs.³ In accordance with the various parameters, we will expect that crosslinguistically the following generalizations hold true:

(a) Nouns and verbs are semantically more complex, while adpositions are likely to have some schematic meaning (desemanticization).

(b) Nouns and verbs have a much larger syntactic and discourse pragmatic potential of use than adpositions, which are confined to occurrence next to a noun or noun phrase (decategorialization).

(c) Nouns and verbs can be the target of WH-questions (e.g. What is this?, What does he do?), while this is usually not possible in the case of adpositions (Where is the book? *In.)

(d) Nouns and verbs take a maximal range of inflectional and derivational morphology, while the range of inflectional and derivational morphology that can be used with adpositions is severely limited, typically being zero (decategorialization).

(e) Adpositions are on average shorter than nouns and verbs (erosion).

But our concern was not with the synchronic implications of grammaticalization; rather, we were concerned with reconstruction. Using grammaticalization theory as a framework, we arrived at a network of grammaticalization, summarized in Figure 2.1. “A scenario of evolution” On the basis of this network, we hypothesize that certain functional categories are more grammaticalized than others; for example, adpositions are more grammaticalized than adverbs and tense markers are more grammaticalized than aspect markers.

Research that was carried out in the course of the last decades on the typology of grammatical categories in both their diachronic and synchronic manifestations has brought about a number of observations that have a bearing on how human language evolved. On the basis of these observations, Givo̒n proposes the following hypotheses:⁴

(70) Hypotheses on language evolution (Talmy Givo̒n, Funknet, August 8, 2005)

a. All other things being equal, typological features that are more widely attested across languages may have appeared earlier in evolution.

b. Typological features that are more frequent in live communication may appear earlier in evolution.

c. In grammaticalization chains, earlier stages, those that tend to be ‘‘source constructions’’, may also have evolved earlier.

d. Likewise in morphemic development, concrete lexical senses have most likely evolved before more abstract, metaphoric and/ or grammatical, uses.

e. Communicative behavior (function) most likely has preceded grammaticalization (structure) in evolution.

Two of these hypotheses, (70c) and (70d), are fully in accordance with the findings presented above. By using the methodology, it is possible to reconstruct present-day functional categories back to earlier stages of language evolution where such categories must have been absent—that is, there is reason to argue that functional categories located on earlier stages of grammaticalization chains and/or expressing concrete rather than abstract grammatical meanings can be hypothesized to have appeared earlier in the evolution of human language. And it would also seem plausible that, in accordance with hypothesis (70e), communicative behavior preceded grammaticalization in language evolution; we will return to this issue after having looked at a larger range of phenomena.

But two of the hypotheses proposed in (70) are not fully supported by our reconstructions. (70a) is in fact an attractive hypothesis: Properties that are found in all languages of the world must be old, therefore they are suggestive of having been part of early language, or at least of some earlier stage of language development; conversely, properties that are found in a few languages only are more likely to be of more recent origin. In fact, hypothesis (70a) receives partial support from the observations we made with reference to Figure 2.1 in “A scenario of evolution”: Most languages of the world have some equivalent of the categories of the less grammaticalized layers I through IV, while some categories figuring in the more grammaticalized layers V and VI are less commonly distinguished in the languages of the world.

Nevertheless, there are also problems with (70a): For example, crosslinguistic observations suggest that functional categories such as adjectives and verbal aspect, located at layers III and IV respectively, are not distinguished in all languages, while pronouns, located at layer V, do exist in all languages known to us. On the basis of such observations there is reason to question the contribution that an approach that is restricted to synchronic typological generalizations can make to the study of early language. Accordingly, we follow Givo̒n (2002a; 2005), who himself insists that any linguistic work aimed at studying earlier states of language evolution that does not take diachronic evidence into account is likely to miss certain insights that are crucial for reconstruction. And (70b) is also not uncontroversial. While this is an appealing hypothesis that requires further analysis, it is not entirely supported by the findings made, as can be shown with the following example. Among the twenty most frequently occurring words in written English there is none that clearly belongs to any of the layers I, II, or III, that is, which is distinctly lexical in nature; rather, it is function words of layers IVand V that exhibit the highest frequency, such as articles (the, a), adpositions (in, to, of, etc.), personal pronouns (I, he), or connectives (and, but).

We are now in a position to return to the questions raised in the introduction. The first of these questions was: Which is older, the lexicon or grammar? As our scenario in Figure 2.1 “A scenario of evolution “ suggests, it was the lexicon that must have preceded grammar in evolution: Lexical categories such as nouns and verbs are a prerequisite for other categories to arise. And there is also a clear answer to the question of what the structure of human language was like when it first evolved: All evidence from grammaticalization leads to the same hypothesis, namely that the earliest structure of human language was lexical in nature, first consisting only of noun-like utterances before verbal utterances appeared, thereby making it possible to form propositional constructions.

This leaves us with the remaining two questions, namely: How did language change from its genesis to now? Was language evolution abrupt or gradual? The grammaticalization scenario that we proposed allows for no interpretation other than that the evolution of grammar proceeded gradually from fairly rudimentary, lexically based structures to increasingly differentiated grammatical structures. Each new layer contributed new grammatical distinctions, leading incrementally to increasing morphological and syntactic complexity, culminating in layer VI, where there now was a fully-fledged grammatical architecture akin to that found in modern languages. To conclude, on the basis of our reconstruction there is little support for any hypothesis to the effect that human language evolved abruptly in a discrete leap from non-language to modern languages. However, the possibility that the evolution from layer I to VI proceeded relatively fast—thus giving the impression of a sudden change—cannot be entirely ruled out.

¹ An anonymous referee of this work draws attention to the fact that the perspective adopted is a semasiological one, while increasing grammatical complexity would be an onomasiological problem.

² Such a network was outlined in Heine and Kuteva (2002a) but no evidence was provided there to substantiate the hypotheses on which the network rests.

³ As Fritz Newmeyer (p.c.) rightly observes, this does not necessarily apply to adpositional phrases vis-a `-vis other phrasal categories.

⁴ Hypotheses proposed by Talmy Givo̒n in the e-mail network Funknet, August 8, 2005.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

جناح العتبة العباسية المقدسة في معرض طهران الدولي يشهد فعاليات متنوِّعة

شعبة مدارس الكفيل تطلق حملتها السنوية لدعم العوائل المتعففة في شهر رمضان المبارك

بأجواء رمضانية مميزة.. مجموعة مشاتل الكفيل تستقبل العوائل العراقية يوميًا

المجمع العلمي: الختمة القرآنية الرمضانية المركزية المرتلة تشهد تنوعًا في القراءات والمشاركات

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

دراسة تكشف "السبب الخفي" وراء ترك التمارين الرياضية

كشف التوقيت "المثالي" لتغيير فرشاة الأسنان

بلاستيك في أنسجة بشرية.. دراسة تكشف مفاجأة طبية

دراسة تحذر من الإفراط في ممارسة الرياضة.. كيف يضر دماءك؟

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

"ديب سيك" تحجب أحدث نماذجها عن شركات الرقائق الأميركية

"سامسونغ" تطلق سلسلة هواتف "غالاكسي إس 26"

حملات سرية ورسائل تشويه.. كيف يتم استغلال "تشات جي بي تي"؟

أثر نفسي غير متوقع للرياضة.. مرتبط بالغضب

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Evidence from signed languages

Treating events like objects

Nouns and verbs The fifth layer

Nouns and verbs

Layers

The parameters

Grammaticalization

Questions and approaches

The Genesis of Grammar

Grammatical Relations Subjects and objects

Form, meaning, and use Conclusion

Grammar as a system of rules