Chapter 8 Diachronic corpus study of the four constructions (p. 229-230)
This chapter presents the results of our diachronic corpus research on infinitive constructions with werden, scheinen, drohen and versprechen. The constructions will be described in their chronology from OHG period onward using the theoretical concepts introduced in Chapter 5.
As we are dealing with verbs of (relatively) high frequency and high combinatorial potential, a full treatment of all diachronic ramifications is beyond the scope of this study. We will therefore focus on those periods and constructions that are most decisive for the development of the evidential marker in each verb. This means that, depending on the verb, particular diachronic periods as well as particular lexical and constructional variants are treated differently as to weight and explicitness of exposition depending on their relevance for the grammaticalization process under investigation.
For werden& infinitive, which is the oldest infinitive construction in the set, the development into an evidential marker is accomplished around 1800, i.e., the period from the 18th century onward will not be looked at in this chapter. As werden& infinitive can be taken to be an instance of“polygrammaticalization”, the status of its function as a future marker and its interrelation with the evidential function is discussed in some detail.
The construction scheinen& zu-infinitive, too, will be traced back to its ancestors in OHG to the 18th century, when– as we will show– it was already grammaticalized to a very high degree and functioned in a similar way as it does in PDG. However, as this is a new result of this study, in contrast to werden, a control study with corpus data from the 19th century was conducted for scheinen. This study confirmed that all relevant changes leading to the establishment of the (grammaticalized) evidential construction scheinen& zu-infinitive had occurred before the 19th century.
The verbs drohen and versprechen were much later in developing the relevant constructions and evidential meanings. Therefore, for these two verbs, the older diachronic stages up to ENHG are treated with much less detail than it is done for werden and scheinen. Instead, the 18th and 19th centuries, which are the formative period for the grammaticalization of the evidential construction in these verbs, are treated extensively with a large corpus of additional data. As versprechen has a particularly complex etymology, we have imported research from literature (DWB and Paul 1992).
Our own diachronic analysis starts with the situation at the beginning of the 18th century and looks for those changes which most probably led to the establishment of the construction versprechen& zu-infinitive as an evidential construction.
Thus, the development of the evidential construction of each of the four verbs can be tracked in this chapter, designing a diachronic scenario of the grammaticalization of these constructions that shows the individual path of each verb and at the same time reveals significant parallels to the development of other evidential constructions. A survey focussing on the overall development and the formation of an evidential paradigm including the four infinitive constructions will be given in Chapter 9. |
