Approximative adverbs in modern and pre-modern languages
Approximative adverbs such as almost, nearly, approximately and circa
have received relatively little attention in historical linguistics. This paper documents how approximative expressions become
more frequent as well as more lexically diverse in two European languages, to wit English and Dutch. We argue that this change
is not simply a language-internal matter, comparable to, say, the rise of modal verbs in Germanic, but reflects a cultural
change as well, one having to do with an increasing concern with precision when it comes to numbers and measures (such as
weights or temperatures). We make a distinction among various classes of modified expressions, including numerals, quantifiers
and absolute adjectives, and irrealis uses (I almost made a mistake), and show how diachronic developments
point toward increasing specialization.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Rise of approximators
- 3.Classification and distribution
- 4.Diachronic changes
- 5.Conclusions
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Notes
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References
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