Topics in Subjectification and Modalization

As of Volume 9 (1994/95) John Benjamins Publishing Company is the official publisher of the Belgian Journal of Linguistics, the annual publication of the Linguistic Society of Belgium. Each volume is topical and includes selected papers from the international meetings organised by the LSB.

This volume on subjectification and modalization sheds new light on two kinds of shifts: (i) the shift from originally lexical reading toward propositional or procedural ones and (ii) the shift from direct speech to various forms of indirect speech. The papers of this volume not only corroborate many of the assumptions and hypotheses on semantic and syntactic change made in the literature, but also uncover the underlying principles that motivate these processes. Five papers discuss the patterns lying behind the grammaticalization and subjectification of adverbs and verbs. Three papers dwell on different ways of reporting or distancing the speaker’s own or someone else’s discourse and address the issue of how the speaker can make use of tense to modalize the proposition.