EmBeRGrammaticalization of mental

predicate constructions in Polish

byIwona Kokorniak

and Malgorzata Fabiszak

Grammaticalization and Data, Rouen, France, 10-11 May 2012

Overview1.Grammaticalization

2.Aspect in Slavic

3.Meaning of myśleć ‘think’

4.Aim of the study

5.Prefix semantics

6.Meaning analysis of Perfective prefixed forms of myśleć

7.Quantitative data

8.Degrees of grammaticalization

Grammaticalization

•Grammaticalization - “the attribution of a grammatical character to a previously autonomous word” (Meillet [1912] 1948: 131, as quoted in Hopper 1991: 17)

•The resultant forms are “grammatical”, i.e. part of “grammar” (Hopper 1991: 34 fn. 2)

• Instances of grammaticalization: Categories which are morphologized might safely be said to be part of grammar

Grammaticalization

• Grammaticalization may take place by:

• desemanticization,

• bleaching,

• emptying or loss of semantic or pragmatic meaning,

• increase in abstractness, or

• increase in bondedness: forms may become less free and more bound (Traugott and Heine 1991: 4-7)

Grammaticalization

•Semantic context, salience and relative frequency constitute factors that contribute to grammaticalization

•Grammaticalization is a question of degree: increased syntacticization in its early stages, and increased loss of morphosyntactic independence in its later stages, ultimately leading to zero, i.e. increased morphologization, and phonologization” (Traugott and Heine 1991: 3)

• the more grammaticalized a form, the more frequent it is (Bybee at al 1991: 59-90)

Grammaticalization

•Only certain lexical classes are likely to become grammaticalized (Traugott and Heine 1991: 7-8):• Prepositions

• Postpositions

• Affixes

• Reflexives

•Aspect, number, tense and case, among others, occur frequently across languages as affixal morphology

Semantics of myśleć ‘think’

• characterized by semantic generality and impoverishment (Danielewiczowa 2002: 131)

• Highly polysemous: translated as 1)‘to find relationships between/among things (to meditate, cogitate, understand, judge, consider, think deeply’, 2)’to remember, care about something/somebody’ and 3)‘to intend to do something’ (Doroszewski 2005, SPP)

• myśleć ‘think’, when unaccompanied by any prefix, can be considered an imperfective verb

• its aspect may change into the perfective one by means of adding a prefix

Aspect in Polish

• It is obligatorily expressed by all verb forms, regardless of tense or other grammatical categories, marked by a system of aspectual affixes (prefixes and suffixes)

• A system of Prefectivizing prefixes (po-, na-, ob-, do-, etc.) and Imperfectivizing suffixes (-a, -y/iwa, -wa, etc) is used to represent aspect

• Verbs with no aspectual prefixes are usually Imperfective (IMPF)

e.g. myśleć (IMPF) – wymyślić (P) - wymyślać (IMPF)

• Slavic prefixes were first semantically ‘heavy’, later developed their aspectual function of Perfectivity (Comrie 1976: 89-90)

• po- in Russian (also in Polish) the most neutral semantically (often forms strict aspectual pairs): myśleć - pomyśleć

The meaning of aspect in Slavic (Dickey 2000)

• ‘east-west aspect theory’ for Slavic languages

• ‘totality’ – central semantic category of the western perfective (Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, Slovene)

• ‘temporal definitness’ – central semantic category of the eastern perfective (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian)

• a temporally definite event “is viewed as both (a) complete whole and (b) qualitatively different from preceding and subsequent states of affairs” (Dickey and Hutcheson 2003: 27-28).

• Transitional zone – Serbo-Croatian and Polish, where the perfective aspect is “a radial or polysemous category with a secondary, local prototype” (Dickey 2000: 39)

• Polish closer to the eastern group

Aspect in Slavic: A cognitive approach (Janda 2004, 2007)

• Distinction crucial to the entire aspectual system:

- completable actions – head towards a result, motivated by the metaphor

A COMPLETABLE ACTION IS TRAVEL TO A DESTINATION

- non-completable actions – no heading towards a result; only them can have Complex Act Perfectives known as Aktionsarten or actionality (Janda 2007: 94) myśleć – pomyśleć (think for a while)

• IMPERFECTIVE IS A FLUID SUBSTANCE

• PERFECTIVE IS A DISCRETE SOLID

• po-, pro- (prze-) are Perfective (DISCRETE SOLID) have perdurative and delimitative meanings, focus on punctuality. Janda (2004, 2007)

Aspect in Polish: A cognitive approach (Kochańska 2007)

• Perfective – “sanctioned in Polish when the endpoints of the profiled process fall properly within the conceptual viewing frame and are therefore clearly ‘visible’ to the conceptualizer” (Kochańska 2007: 156).

• Imperfective – used when “the conceptualizer specifically focuses on the extended duration of the profiled process, conceptualizing its temporal expanse as completely filling the adopted temporal viewing frame; the processual endpoints are construed as coinciding with the boundaries of the immediate scope, rather than falling properly within them” (Kochańska 2007: 157)

• Thus, present-time processes are always designated by non-past imperfectives (Myślę o rozsądnym rozwiązaniu ‘I am thinking about a reasonable solution’; non-past perfectives, on the other hand, have the future-time meaning (Pomyślę o tym ‘I will think about it’

Aspectual pairs

• within a network of verbs expressing a single lexical meaning, Langacker (1999: 103), views aspectual pairhood as a categorizing relationship between a pair of imperfective and perfective verbs that has a high degree of entrenchment and ease of activation

• myśleć ‘think’– depending on the context, certain construals will be sanctioned and in each case a different ‘pair of’ verbs, which are mutually linked by an entrenched categorizing relationship, is activated

Aim of the study

1)which prefixes combined with myśleć are most grammaticalized and which are not?

2) Why can they be considered as grammaticalized / not grammaticalized?

Aspectual pairs of myśleć by Cockiewicz (1992: 183)

• - myśleć : pomyśleć (P); ‘think sth’

- myśleć : namyślić się ‘make up one’s mind’

• - domyślić się (P): domyślać się (IMPF) ‘guess sth’

- obmyślić (P): obmyślać (IMPF) ‘think about’

- namyślić się (P): namyślać się (IMPF) ‘make up one’s mind’

- przemyśleć (P) : przemyśliwać (IMPF) ‘think over/through’

-wymyślić (P): wymyślać (IMPF) ‘come up with’

- zamyślić się (P):zamyślać się (IMPF) ‘fall into deep thought’

- zmyślić (P): zmyślać (IMPF) ‘make up sth’

- rozmyślić się (P)‘change one’s mind’: rozmyślać ‘meditate’

Prefix semantics

• do– indicates an approximation to a goal or result; some effort; reaching the goal may involve encountering certain difficulties along the way, where the trajector (TR) makes every effort to achieve the goal despite any obstacles;

• na– indicates an intensity of an action; expresses a cumulative process

• ob– the image schema involved here refers to a circular motion of TR around LM

• po– forms delimitative verbs to indicate (i) a short duration of an action; (ii) a limited nature of an action; does not involve the attainment of any obvious goal (atelic)

• prze– may depict a three dimensional and bounded LM, such as a tunnel in which the TR moves from one end to the other, where the TR “gradually fills the whole volume of the landmark” (Pasich-Piasecka 1993: 19)

Prefix semantics• roz– in its basic image schema represents the TR and

landmark LM constituting one entity before a change and taking different forms afterwards. Thus, the comparison of the two states of the entity before and after the change profiles different senses of roz-.

• u– in one of its image schemas the LM is construed as s a collection of entities among which the selected TR is located; thus, the TR constitutes part of the LM

• wy– construal of the TR’s emergence from the LM, or its coming into existence by leaving the bounded region of the LM; the container image schema evoked

• za– can represent a construal of ‘excess’ with intransitive perfective verbs, being extended from the sense of ‘going beyond a boundary’

• z– implies following a path and then veering off in another direction

• (Dickey 2006, 2009, ms.; Przybylska 2001, 2006; Piernikarski 1975; Śmiech 1986; Tabakowska 2003a)

The meaning of Perfective prefixed forms of myśleć

• domyślić się ‘guess sth’– focus on the end point and result; intensive-resultative verb (Dickey 2009)

• namyślić się ‘make up one’s mind’– focus on cumulative nature process, and goal attainement

• obmyślić ‘think about’– the mental process has a circular nature, which means that the object of thinking is considered from many different perspectives

• pomyśleć ‘think sth’– beginning of an action but no end or result, focus on process; A prefix overlaps with the meaning of a source verb enough to produce a compound verb whose meaning is identical to that of the impf source verb save for aspect (Dickey 2006: 12)

• przemyśleć ‘think over/through’– implies the in-depth nature of the mental activity; also points at its completeness and duration

The meaning of Perfective prefixed forms of myśleć

ctnd.• rozmyślić się ‘change one’s mind’– an observed

change in the subject’s mental state - between the ‘normal’ process of the mental activity represented by the unprefixed form into the ‘changed’ mental state represented by the prefixed one;

• the reflexive pronoun emphasizes the internal mental change of the subject, which may also bring about a change in the subject’s behaviour frequently conceived of by observers as a negative one (Przybylska 2001: 279-280, Tabakowska 2003b)

• umyślić coś ‘set one’s mind on sth, decide’- the mental process involves selection of one entity from a collection; the subject of the process thus focuses his/her attention on the selected entity, with the mental activity not being entirely conscious and goal-oriented

• wymyślić ‘come up with’– refers to a mental activity as a result of which one or more ideas emerge from one’s mind; completeness of the process, which is conscious and goal-oriented; punctual in nature

• zamyślić się ‘fall into deep thought’– an absorbtive verb, as it construes a continuous process whose subject, by becoming deeply engrossed in the activity, loses control over it;

• the mental activity occurs independently of the subject’s will, some adverse consequences may be expected (Dickey ms.)

• zmyślić ‘make up sth, think sth up’- the subject involved in the mental activity suddenly strays from the normal train of thought and produces an unexpected idea (deviant result – a false proposition)

Prefix/Aspect frequencies; PWN Corpus

Ja to uzupełnięPrefix Imperf Perf Totaldo- 542 350 892na- 59 32 91ob- 44 47 101po- 0 998 998prze- 28 225 253roz- 180 64 244u- 0 26 26wy- 269 1057 1326za- 31 185 185z- 33 25 58

Degrees of grammaticalization

Degrees of grammaticalization

• Most grammaticalized aspectual pairs with myśleć:

myśleć (IMPF):pomyśleć ‘think sth’ (P),

• Less grammaticalized aspectual pairs with suffixal derivation:

przemyśleć (P):przemyśliwać (IMPF) ‘think through; wymyślić (P):wymyślać (IMPF) ‘come up with sth’; domyślić się (P):domyślać się (IMPF) ‘guess’; namyślić się (P):namyślać się (IMPF) ‘make up one’s mind’; obmyślić (P):obmyślać (IMPF) ‘think about’; zamyślić się’ fall into deep thought’ : zamyślać się; rozmyślić się ‘change one’s mind’: rozmyślać (IMPF) ‘cogitate’; umyślić ‘decide’;

• Least grammaticalized affixed forms:

zmyślić : zmyślać ‘think up, make up sth’

Conclusions•po- most grammaticalized: little

semantic value; grammatical – aspectual value added; most frequent in the Perfective, most bound in form

•prze- na-, wy-, do-, ob-, u-, roz- add both semantic and grammatical value

•z- adds grammatical value, but most importantly changes the semantic value

References• Bybee, Joan L., William Pagliuca and Revere D. Perkins. 1991. “Back to the future”

”, in: Elizabeth C. Traugott and Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization. Vol. 2, Focus on types of grammatical markers. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 59-90.

• Cockiewicz, Wacław. 1992. Aspekt na tle systemu słowotwórczego polskiego czasownika... Kraków: Uniwersytet Jagielloński.

• Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Danielewiczowa, Magdalena. 2002. Wiedza i niewiedza: Studium polskich czasowników epistemicznych. [Knowing and Not Knowing: A study of Polish epistemic predicates.] Warszawa: Katedra Lingwistyki Formalnej UW.

• Dickey, Stephen M. 2000. Parameters of Slavic aspect: A cognitive approach. Stanford: CSLI.

• Dickey, Stephen M. 2006. Aspectual pairs, goal orientation, and po- delimitatives in Russian. Glossos 7. (http://seelrc.org/glossos/issues/7/dickey.pdf) (date of access: 9th Nov. 2009).

• Dickey, Stephen M. 2009. Subjectification and the East-West aspect division. (Paper presented at the 9th Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 16th Oct. 2009.).

• Dickey, Stephen M. (manuscript). Subjectification and the Russian perfective.

• Dickey, Stephen M. and Julie Hutcheson. 2003. “Delimitative verbs in Russian, Czech and Slavic”, in: Robert A. Maguire and Alan Timberlake (eds.), American contributions to the Thirteenth International Congress of Slavists. Columbus: Ohio Slavica, 23-36. (http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/5473/1/Dickey%20%26%20Hutcheson%20Delimitatives.pdf) (date of access: 9th Nov. 2009)

References

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Na tle rodzajów akcji w językach słowiańskich. [Verbs with the po- prefix in Polish and Czech: In the background of Aktionsarten in Slavic languages]. Warszawa: PWN.

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• Przybylska, Renata. 2006. Schematy wyobrażeniowe a semantyka polskich prefiksów czasownikowych do-, od-, prze-, roz-, u-. [Image schemata and semantics of Polish verb prefixes do-, od-, prze-, roz-, u-]. Kraków: Universitas.

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• Tabakowska, Elżbieta. 2003a. Space and time in Polish: The preposition za and the verbal prefix za-. In H. Cuyckens, T. Berg, R. Dirven & K.-U. Panther (eds.), Motivation in Language. Studies in Honor of Günter Radden, 153-177. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

• Tabakowska, Elżbieta. 2003b. The notorious Polish reflexive pronouns: A plea for Middle Voice. Glossos 4. (www.seelrc.org/glossos/issues/4/tabakowska.pdf), (date of access: 9th Nov. 2008)

• Traugott, Elizabeth C. and Bernd Heine. 1991. “Introduction”, in: Elizabeth C. Traugott and Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization. Vol. 2, Focus on types of grammatical markers. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1-14.

Thank you for your attention

kokorniak@ifa.amu.edu.pl

fagosia@ifa.amu.edu.pl