Cover not available
Part of
Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar
Edited by Martin Hilpert, Bert Cappelle and Ilse Depraetere
[Constructional Approaches to Language 32] 2021
► pp. 81–122

Grammaticalization of verdienen into an auxiliary marker of deontic modality

An item-driven usage-based approach

| Leibniz Universität Hannover
| Leibniz Universität Hannover
| Leibniz Universität Hannover

This paper investigates synchronic variation in the lexical and grammatical environments of the German lexical verb verdienen ‘earn’, ‘deserve’. In its lexical uses, verdienen co-occurs with an object noun phrase whose head is either concrete (e.g. Geld ‘money’) or, more commonly, abstract (e.g. Beachtung ‘attention’). When it is used more grammatically with deontic modal meaning, verdienen is followed by a passive or active infinitive. This paper uses collostructional analyses to contrast lexical and grammatical uses in terms of the most strongly attracted lexical items, which are grouped into semantic classes. The results reflect different degrees of host-class expansion (cf. Himmelmann 2004), whereby the collexemes of verdienen expand from concrete to abstract and their morpho-syntactic contexts from nominal to infinitival complement and subsequently from passive to active. Synchronic distribution can thus serve as a window on diachronic development (Kuteva 2001), in this case the rise of a deontic modality marker.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Grammaticalization and constructional concepts
    • 2.2Deontic modality
      • 2.2.1Obligation and permission
      • 2.2.2Stativity and scope
      • 2.2.3The rise of modal meaning
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Data and identification of constructions with verdienen
    • 3.2Simple collexeme analysis
    • 3.3Semantic classification of strongly attracted lexemes
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
    • Lex1 and Lex2
    • Movement along the grammaticalization path from LEX to GRAM
    • Gram1 and Gram2
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 12 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.32.04die
References
Bech, G.
(1951) Grundzüge der semantischen Entwicklungsgeschichte der hochdeutschen Modalverben. Kopenhagen: Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D.
(1980)  Wanna and the gradience of auxiliaries. In G. Brettschneider & C. Lehmann (Eds.), Wege zur Universalienforschung: Sprachwissenschaftliche Beitrage zum 60. Geburtstag von Hansjakob Seiler (pp. 292–299). Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Bybee, J. L., Perkins, R. D. & Pagliuca, W.
(1994) The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Church, K. & Hanks, P.
(1990) Word association norms, mutual information, and lexicography. Computational Linguistics, 16(1), 22–29.Google Scholar
Coussé, E., Andersson, P. & Olofsson, J.
(2018) Grammaticalization meets Construction Grammar. Opportunities, challenges and potential incompatibilities. Constructional Approaches to Language, 21, 3–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dekalo, Volodymyr
(2019) Modale Konstruktionen mit den Verben vermögen, wissen, verstehen, bekommen: Eine konstruktionsgrammatische Untersuchung. [URL]
Dekalo, V. & Hampe, B.
(2017) Networks of meanings: Complementing collostructional analysis by cluster and network analyses. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 5(1), 151–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diewald, G.
(1999) Die Modalverben im Deutschen. Grammatikalisierung und Polyfunktionalität. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2000) A basic semantic template for lexical and grammaticalized uses of the German modals. In: J. van der Auwera & P. Dendale (Eds.), Modal Verbs in Germanic and Romance Languages = Belgian Journal of Linguistics 14, 23–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Context types in grammaticalization as constructions. Constructions, Special Volume 1.Google Scholar
(2015) Review of: Elizabeth Closs Traugott & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 137, 108–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2020) Paradigms lost – paradigms regained: Paradigms as hyper-constructions. In L. Sommerer & E. Smirnova (Eds.), Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar (pp.277–315). Amsterdam, New York: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diewald, G. & Smirnova, E.
(2010) Evidentiality in German. Linguistic Realization and Regularities in Grammaticalization. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunning, T.
(1993) Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics, 19(1), 61–74.Google Scholar
Evert, S.
(2008) Corpora and collocations. In A. Lüdeling & M. Kytö (Eds.), Corpus linguistics: An international handbook. (= Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science (HSK), 29.1 .) (pp. 1212–1248). Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Flach, S.
(2017) Collostructions: An R implementation for the family of collostructional methods. Package version v.0.1.0. [URL], Accessed May 1, 2019.
Gamon, D.
(1993) On the development of epistemicity in the German modal verbs mögen and müssen . Folia Linguistica Historica, 14, 125–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geyken, A.
(2007) The DWDS corpus: A reference corpus for the German language of the 20th century. In C. Fellbaum (Ed.), Idioms and collocations: Corpus-based linguistic and lexicographic studies (Corpus and discourse. Research in corpus and discourse) (pp. 23–41). London, New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P.
(1975) Logic and Conversation. Syntax and Semantics 3 (Reprinted as ch.2 of Grice 1989), 22–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gries, S. T. & Ellis, N. C.
(2015) Statistical measures for usage-based linguistics. Language Learning, 65, 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gries, S. T.
(2015) More (old and new) misunderstandings of collostructional analysis: On Schmid and Küchenhoff (2013). Cognitive Linguistics, 26(3), 505–536. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grimm, J. & Grimm, W.
(1854) Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm. [URL]
Hamp, B. & Feldweg, H.
(1997) GermaNet – a lexical-semantic net for German. In P. Vossen (Ed.), Automatic information extraction and building of lexical semantic resources for NLP applications: ACL Workshop proceedings, July 12th 1997, Madrid (pp. 9–15). Somerset, N.J.: Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar
(1997) GermaNet – a lexical-semantic net for German. In P. Vossen (Ed.), Automatic information extraction and building of lexical semantic resources for NLP applications: Acl/EACL Workshop proceedings, July 12th 1997, Madrid (pp. 9–15). Somerset, N.J.: Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar
Heine, B.
(1993) Auxiliaries: Cognitive Forces and Grammaticalization. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heine, B. & Kuteva, T.
(2002) World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heine, B. & Miyashita, H.
(2008) Accounting for a functional category: German drohen ‘to threaten’. Language Sciences, 30, 53–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heine, B., Claudi, U. & Hünnemeyer, F.
(1991) Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hilpert, M.
(2014) Collostructional analysis: Measuring associations between constructions and lexical elements. Human cognitive processing, 43, 391–404. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) Three open questions in Diachronic Construction Grammar. In E. Coussé, P. Andersson & J. Olofsson (Eds.), Grammaticalization meets Construction Grammar (pp. 21–39). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, N. P.
(1997) Deiktikon, Artikel, Nominalphrase. Zur Emergenz syntaktischer Struktur. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2004) Lexicalization and Grammaticization: Opposite or orthogonal? In W. Bisang, N. P. Himmelmann & B. Wiemer (Eds.), What makes grammaticalization: a look from its fringes and its components (pp. 21–42). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hopper, P.
(1991) On Some Principles of Grammaticization. In E. C. Traugott & B. Heine (Eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization. Volume I: Focus on Theorretical and Methodological Issues (pp. 17–35). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hopper, P. & Traugott, E. C.
(2003) Grammaticalization. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [First edition 1993]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koplenig, A.
(2017) Against statistical significance testing in corpus linguistics. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory.Google Scholar
Krug, M. G.
(2000) Emerging English Modals. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuteva, T.
(2001) Auxiliation. An Enquiry into the Nature of Grammaticalization. Oxford: University Press.Google Scholar
Lamiroy, B.
(2011) Degrés de grammaticalisation à travers les langues de mème famille. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, NS 19, 167–192.Google Scholar
Lamiroy, B. & De Mulder, W.
(2011) Degrees of grammaticalization across languages. In B. Heine & H. Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization (pp. 302–317). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lehmann, C.
(2015) Thoughts on Grammaticalization. 3rd ed. Classics in Linguistics 1 [First edition 1982].Google Scholar
Lyons, J.
(1977) Semantics. 2 vol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Narrog, H.
(2012) Modality, subjectivity, and semantic change. A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford, New York, Auckland: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Noël, D.
(2007) Diachronic construction grammar and grammaticalization theory. Functions of Language, 14, 177–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nordlinger, R. & Traugott, E. C.
(1997) Scope and the development of epistemic modality: Evidence from ought to. English language and linguistics, 1, 295–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pecina, P.
(2010) Lexical association measures and collocation extraction. Language Resources and Evaluation, 44(1–2), 137–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plank, F.
(1981) Modalitätsausdruck zwischen Autonomie und Auxiliarität. Lunder germanistische Forschungen, 50, 57–71.Google Scholar
Ramat, P.
(1971) Die Analyse eines morphosemantischen Feldes: die germanischen Modalverben. Indogermanische Forschungen, 76, 174–202.Google Scholar
Saussure, F. de
(1983/1916) Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. [Engl. 1983: Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Roy Harris. Duckworth, London: Open Court, La Salle, III].Google Scholar
Schmid, H.-J. & Küchenhoff, H.
(2013) Collostructional analysis and other ways of measuring lexicogrammatical attraction: Theoretical premises, practical problems and cognitive underpinnings. Cognitive Linguistics, 24(3), 531–577. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stefanowitsch, A. & Gries, S. T.
(2003) Collostructions: Investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 8(2), 209–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sweetser, E.
(1990) From etymology to pragmatics. Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, E. C. & Trousdale, G.
(2013) Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, E. C.
(1989) On the rise of epistemic meaning in English: An example of subjectification in semantic change. Language, 65, 31–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015) Towards a coherent account of grammatical constructionalization. In J. Barðdal, E. Smirnova, L. Sommerer & S. Gildea (Eds.), Diachronic Construction Grammar (pp. 51–79). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Toward a constructional framework for research on language change. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 1, 3–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van der Auwera, J. & Plungian, V. A.
(1998) Modality’s semantic map. Linguistic Typology, 2, 79–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
WALS. World Atlas of Language Structures:
[URL]
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Diewald, Gabriele
2020. Paradigms lost – paradigms regained. In Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 27], ► pp. 278 ff. DOI logo
Diewald, Gabriele & Dániel Czicza
2022. Variation and Grammaticalization of Verbal Constructions. Constructions and Frames 14:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Diewald, Gabriele, Dániel Czicza & Volodymyr Dekalo
2022. Clause linkage and degrees of grammaticalization. Constructions and Frames 14:1 ► pp. 181 ff. DOI logo
Schneider, Stefan
2023. Construct types in language change. Journal of Historical Linguistics DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.