Grammaticalization of modal markers has long been thought of in terms of change from deontic to epistemic meaning. This change, then, is typically thought of as a mapping between conceptual domains. Contrary to this perception, I argue in this paper that (1) change from deontic to epistemic (that is, the acquisition of epistemic meaning by deontic markers), although salient in many European languages, is cross-linguistically a marginal tendency, (2), the cross-linguistically most salient tendency in the development of modal markers is towards greater speaker-orientation, and (3), this change can best be explained by primarily referring to pragmatic processes, rather than conceptual processes. I substantiate my claims by analyzing the cross-linguistic modality data in Bybee et al. (1994), by providing a catalogue of etymologies of Modern Japanese modal markers, and by analyzing the polysemy and semantic change of one specific marker in Japanese language history (-be-si) in detail.
2014. On the pragmatics of subjectification: The grammaticalization of verbless allative futures (with a case study in Ancient Egyptian). Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 46:1 ► pp. 25 ff.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
2011. Modality from a Historical Perspective. Language and Linguistics Compass 5:6 ► pp. 381 ff.
Moriya, Tetsuharu & Kaoru Horie
2009. What Is and Is not Language-Specific about the Japanese Modal System? A Comparative and Historical Perspective. In Japanese Modality, ► pp. 87 ff.
Narrog, Heiko
2009. Modality, Modariti and Predication — the Story of Modality in Japan. In Japanese Modality, ► pp. 9 ff.
Narrog, Heiko
2010. Voice and non-canonical case marking in the expression of event-oriented modality. Linguistic Typology 14:1
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