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The history of very: the directionality of functional shift and (inter)subjectification1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2016

TINE BREBAN  and
KRISTIN DAVIDSE
TINE BREBAN
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and English Language, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PLUnited Kingdomtine.breban@manchester.ac.uk
KRISTIN DAVIDSE
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Leuven, Blijde Inkomststraat 21, 3000 LeuvenBelgiumkristin.davidse@kuleuven.be
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Abstract

On the basis of extensive corpus analysis, we reconstruct the history of very and the paths of change along which it acquired new meanings. We propose an analytical model that, firstly, assigns general semantic functions to the (sub)modifier relations in the English noun phrase and, secondly, identifies subsenses of these functions on the basis of collocational, semantic and pragmatic distinctions observed in different contexts. Thus, we arrive at a comprehensive description of the various (sub)modifier relations in which very has functioned in its history. Having been borrowed into English as part of fixed collocations such as very Ihus (‘the true Jesus’) and croice verra (‘the true cross’), very successively acquired the functions of descriptive modifier, noun-intensifier, focus marker, adjective-intensifier, classifier, postdeterminer-intensifier, quantifier-intensifier and postdeterminer. This description allows us to interpret the history of very as a paradigm case of progressive grammaticalization and (inter)subjectification involving leftward movement in the English NP (Adamson 2000). Our analytical model allows us to capture finer mechanisms of change such as collocational extension, pragmatically driven host class expansion, invited inferences and analogy.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 221 - 249
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

1

We sincerely thank the two anonymous referees for their very generous and helpful comments, which helped us re-define ‘our problem space’. We also thank Wim van der Wurff, who started us off on the revision, and Laurel Brinton, who helped us complete the revision cycle. Tine Breban worked on this paper at the Freie Universität Berlin, while she was funded as a post-doctoral fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. She thanks Ferdinand von Mengden and all colleagues at the FU Berlin for their hospitality. Kristin Davidse was able to work on this paper thanks to the sabbatical leave grant K8.017.12N from the Research Fund Flanders FWO. This joint research was further supported by the GOA-project 12/007, ‘The multiple functional load of grammatical signs’, awarded by the Research Council of the University of Leuven.

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