Data and Argumentation in Historical Pragmatics

Grammaticalization of a Catalan Motion Verb Construction

Katalin Nagy C.

 

Data and Argumentation in Historical Pragmatics has two interrelated aims, one empirical and one theoretical.
The empirical aim of this volume is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the beginnings of a semantic change process in the grammaticalization of the medieval Catalan anar 'go' + infinitive construction, investigating it from a historical pragmatic perspective. Catalan is unique among Romance languages in that a purposive construction involving this motion verb achieves a perfective past meaning. This evolution is in contrast with the universal pathway of verbs meaning 'go' to grammaticalize into future markers in similar constructions, detected in several languages of the world. Although this volume discusses a micro-level study on a grammaticalization process which, according to the previous literature, does not fit any universal tendency hitherto revealed, it also provides new information about the macro-level process of semantic change of motion verbs in general.

The theoretical aim of this volume is to examine some methodological questions in historical pragmatics and contribute in this way to recent metalinguistic discussions on data, methods and argumentation in linguistics. Methodological issues have not only been present in historical pragmatics since the beginnings, but their resolution is seen as a crucial factor which will determine the future of this linguistic sub-discipline.

Katalin Nagy C. is Research Fellow at the MTA-DE-SZTE Research Group for Theoretical Linguistics, University of Szeged, Hungary.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Object-scientific Part of the Study: Initial Stage of Grammaticalization of the Catalan "anar + infinitive" Construction
3. Methodological Part of the Study: Data and Argumentation in Historical Pragmatics
4. Grammaticalization of the Catalan "anar + infinitive" Construction
5. Summary
Appendix: Occurrences of the Catalan "anar + infinitive" and "anar a + infinitive" in the Corpus
Notesm Historical Sources, and References
Author Index and Subject Index

2019 264pp 234 x 156mm
hb ISBN 9781781797464
£75.00 / $100.00 £56.25 / $75.00
eBook ISBN 9781781797471

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