Cover not available
Article published In:
The Rise and Development of Evidential and Epistemic Markers
Edited by Silvio Cruschina and Eva-Maria Remberger
[Journal of Historical Linguistics 7:1/2] 2017
► pp. 77–110

From verum to epistemic modality and evidentiality

On the emergence of the Spanish Adv+C construction

| University of Vienna

In this article, I investigate the diachronic development of a construction in Modern Spanish. It consists of an epistemic or evidential modifier followed by the complementizer (hence Adv+C) that heads root clauses (Seguro Adv que C viene ‘Surely he/she will come’). I demonstrate that the distributional, semantic, and pragmatic properties support a monoclausal analysis for Modern Spanish Adv+C as well as for its historical source construction. I propose a cartographic analysis associating Adv+C and the source construction with a low position in Rizzi’s split CP. Supported by corpus data, I identify a verum focus construction (Aff+C) as the origin of Adv+C. I claim that the loss of the verum interpretation triggers the reanalysis of the construction. This ultimately gives rise to its productive extension to other epistemic and evidential modifiers.

Keywords: left periphery, complementizers, verum focus, epistemic modality, evidentiality, grammaticalization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The phenomenon
  • 3.Properties of Adv+C in Modern Spanish
    • 3.1Syntactic distribution of Adv+C
    • 3.2Semantics and pragmatics of Adv+C
  • 4.Diachronic development of Adv+C
    • 4.1Biclausal source hypothesis
    • 4.2Verum hypothesis
  • 5.Towards an analysis of Adv+C and Aff+C
    • 5.1 Hernanz (2007) and a revised analysis for Aff+C
    • 5.2 Hill (2007) and a revised analysis for Adv+C
    • 5.3Process of grammaticalization
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Databases
  • References
Published online: 23 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.7.1-2.04koc
References

Databases

CdE Davies, Mark 2002– Corpus del Español: 100 million words, 1200s–1900s. Available online at [URL].
CORDE Real Academia Española (online): Corpus diacrónico del español (CORDE). Available online at [URL].
CREA Real Academia Española (online): Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual. Available online at [URL].
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.
2004 Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna
2008 Productivity: Evidence from case and argument structure in Icelandic. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bartra, Anna & Avellina Suñer
1997 Inert Agreement Projections and the Syntax of Bare Adjectives. Probus 9:1.1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Batllori, Montserrat & Maria-Lluïsa Hernanz
2008 Emphatic Polarity from Latin to Romance. University of Girona and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana
2013 On Fin: Italian che, Japanese no, and the selective properties of the copula in clefts. Deep Insights, Broad Perspectives. Essays in Honor of Mamoru Saito ed. by Yoichi Miyamoto, Daiko Takahashi, Hideki Maki, Masao Ochi, Koji Sugisaki, & Asako Uchibori, 41–55. Tokyo: Kaitakusha Co., Ltd.Google Scholar
Buesa García, Carlos
2011 El hueco de sujeto en español y algunas consecuencias teóricas y empíricas. Cuadernos de la ALFAL 31.7–18.Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel
2006 Intonation und Informationsstruktur. Text – Verstehen. Grammatik und darüber hinaus ed. by Hardarik Blühdorn, Eva Breindl, & Ulirich H. Waßner, 144–163. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Campbell, Lyle & Richard Janda
2000 Introduction: Conceptions of grammaticalization and their problems. Language Sciences 231:2–3.93–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L.
1994 Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
1999 Adverbs and Functional Heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cruschina, Silvio
2015 The Expression of Evidentiality and Epistemicity: Cases of grammaticalization in Italian and Sicilian. Probus 27:1.1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cruschina, Silvio & Eva-Maria Remberger
To appear. Before the Complementizer: Adverb types and root clause modification. Adjective – Adverb Interfaces in Romance ed. by Martin Hummel & Salvador Valera Amsterdam John Benjamins DOI logo
Demonte, Violeta & Olga Fernández Soriano
2009 Force and Finiteness in the Spanish Complementizer System. Probus 21:1.23–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Evidentiality and Illocutionary Force: Spanish matrix que at the syntax-pragmatics interface. Left Sentence Peripheries in Spanish: Diachronic, Variationist, and Typological Perspectives ed. by Andreas Dufter & Alvero O. de Toledo, 217–252. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Dendale, Patrick & Liliane Tasmowski
2001 Introduction: Evidentiality and related notions. Journal of Pragmatics 33:3.339–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diewald, Gabriele
1997 Grammatikalisierung: Eine Einführung in Sein und Werden grammatischer Formen. Niemeyer: Tübingen. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eguren, Luis & Cristina Sánchez
2007 Grammar and History of Spanish cierto . Proceedings of the Workshop Definiteness, Specificity and Animacy in Ibero-Romance Languages ed. by Georg A. Kaiser, 1–22. Konstanz: Universität Konstanz.Google Scholar
Estellès, Maria
2009 Spanish Digressive Markers por cierto and a propósito . Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics ed. by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Jacqueline Visconti, 123–145. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Etxepare, Ricardo
1997 The Grammatical Representation of Speech Events. University of Maryland PhD thesis.Google Scholar
Fábregas, Antonio & Raquel González
2016 Building Negative Events. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Frascarelli, Mara & Roland Hinterhölzl
2007 Types of Topics in German and Italian. On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations Across Languages ed. by Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler, 87–116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freites Barros, Francisco
2006 El marcador de discurso Claro: funcionamiento pragmático, metadiscursivo y organizador de la estructura temática. VERBA 331.261–279.Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra
2010 About the Speaker. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
González, Montserrat
2005 An Approach to Catalan Evidentiality. Intercultural Pragmatics 2:4.515–540. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Evidentiality, Intersubjectivity and Salience in Spanish and Catalan Markers claro/clar and la verdad/veritat . Intercultural Pragmatics 11:3.409–434. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane
2004 Topicalization, CLLD and the Left Periphery. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 35:1.157–192.Google Scholar
Hernanz, M. Lluísa
2007 From Polarity to Modality: Some (a)symmetries between bien and sí in Spanish. Studies in Spanish Syntax ed. by Luis Eguren & Olga Fernández-Soriano, 105–150. Venice: Cafoscarina.Google Scholar
Hernanz, M. Lluísa & Gemma Rigau
2006 Variación dialectal y periferia izquierda. Andolin Gogoan: Essays in Honour of Professor Eguzkitza ed. by Beatriz Fernández & Itziar Laka, 435–452. Bilbao: Servei editorial de la UPV-EHU.Google Scholar
Heycock, Caroline
2006 Embedded Root Phenomena. The Blackwell Companion to Syntax ed. by Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk, 174–209. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Virginia
2007 Romanian Adverbs and the Pragmatic Field. The Linguistic Review 241.61–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 A Main Clause Complementizer. Main Clause Phenomena: New horizons ed. by Lobke Aelbrecht, Liliane Haegeman, & Rachel Nye, 279–295. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Höhle, Tilman N.
1992 Ueber Verum-Fokus im Deutschen. Informationsstruktur und Grammatik ed. by Joachim Jacobs, 112–141. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hummel, Martin
2014 The Adjective-Adverb Interface in Romance and English. Adjectives in Germanic and Romance ed. by Petra Sleeman, Freek van de Velde, & Harry Perridon, 35–71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang
2006 On Finiteness. Semantics in Acquisition ed. by Veerle van Geenhoven, 245–272. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kocher, Anna
2014 Claro que son Adverbios: Análisis de un Proceso de Gramaticalización. University of Vienna MA thesis.Google Scholar
In preparation. Non-Embedding que in Ibero-Romance. University of Vienna PhD thesis.
Laka, Itiar
1990 Negation in Syntax. MIT PhD thesis.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, Adam
2005 Moving Through the Left Periphery: The dual complementiser system in the dialects of Southern Italy. Transactions of the Philological Society 103:3.339–396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lohnstein, Horst
2007 On Clause Types and Sentential Force. Linguistische Berichte 2091.63–86.Google Scholar
2015 Verum Focus. The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure ed. by Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lupşa, Cornelia Daniela
2011 Deconstructing the Adverb Plus Complementizer Construction in Romanian. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics 21.91–99.Google Scholar
Lyons, John
1977 Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Martín Zorraquino, María Antonia
1998 Los marcadores del discurso desde el punto de vista gramatical. Los Marcadores del Discurso: Teoría y Análisis ed. by María Antonia Martín Zorraquino, 19–54. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar
Martins, Ana Maria
2006 Emphatic Affirmation and Polarity. Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2004: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Leiden, 9–11 December 2004 ed. by Jenny Doetjes & Paz González, 197–223. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nuyts, Jan
2001 Subjectivity as an Evidential Dimension in Epistemic Modal Expressions. Journal of Pragmatics 331.383–400. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ocampo, Francisco
2006 Movement Towards Discourse is Not Grammaticalization: The evolution of claro from adjective to discourse particle in spoken Spanish. Selected Proceedings of the 9th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium ed. by Nuria Sagarra & Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, 308–319. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Palmer, Frank R.
2001 Mood and Modality. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poletto, Cecilia
2000 The Higher Functional Field: Evidence from Northern Italian dialects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rivero, María-Luisa
1993 Long Head Movement vs. V2, and Null Subject in Old Romance. Lingua 891.217–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi
1997 The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. Elements of Grammar ed. by Liliane Haegeman, 281–337, Dodrecht: Kluwen. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 On the Position “Int(errogative)” in the Left Periphery of the Clause. Current Studies in Italian Syntax Offered to Lorenzo Renzi, Vol. 141 ed. by Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi, 267–296. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
2004 Locality and Left Periphery. Structures and Beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures, Vol. 31 ed. by Adriana Belletti, 223–251. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2013 Notes on Cartography and Further Explanation. International Journal of Latin and Romance Linguistics 25:1.197–226.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian & Anna Roussou
2003 Syntactic Change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez Ramalle, Teresa
2003 La gramática de los adverbios en -mente o cómo expresar maneras, opiniones y actitudes a través de la lengua. Madrid: Ediciones de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.Google Scholar
Rodríguez Ramalle, Teresa M.
2015 A Discourse-Based Approach to Some Uses of the Conjunction que in Romance Languages. Languages in Contrast 15:1.125–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez-Molina, Javier
2014 La gramática oculta de la polaridad positiva en español antiguo. RILCE 30:3.961–915.Google Scholar
Romero, Maribel & Chung-Hye Han
2004 On Negative Yes/No Questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 27:5.609–658. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwarzschild, Roger
1999 Givenness, Avoid F and Other Constraints on the Placement of Accent. Natural Language Semantics 71.144–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Speas, Peggy & Carol Tenny
2003 Configurational Properties of Point of View Roles. Asymmetry in Grammar, Vol. 11 ed. by Anna Maria DiSciullo, 315–345. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert
2002 Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy 25(5/6). 701–721. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Suñer, Avellina & Ángela di Tullio
2014 Bare adjectives as syncretic forms. Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 3(1). 23–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van der Auwera, Johan & Vladimir A. Plungian
1998 Modality’s Semantic Map. Linguistic Typology 21.79–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Gelderen, Elly
2011 The Linguistic Cycle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Villa-García, Julio
2012a Recomplementation and Locality of Movement in Spanish. Probus 241.257–314. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012b The Spanish Complementizer System: Consequences for the syntax of dislocations and subjects, locality of movement, and clausal structure. University of Connecticut PhD thesis.Google Scholar
2015 The Syntax of Multiple-que Sentences in Spanish: Along the left periphery. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Zanuttini, Raffaella
1997 Negation and Clause Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zanuttini, Raffaella & Paul Portner
2003 Exclamative Clauses: At the syntax-semantics interface. Language 79:1.39–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Cruschina, Silvio & Eva-Maria Remberger
2018. Speaker-oriented syntax and root clause complementizers. Linguistic Variation 18:2 ► pp. 336 ff. DOI logo
Kocher, Anna
2023. A sentence mood account for Spanish verum. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8:1 DOI logo
Rodríguez Ramalle, Teresa María
2023. Evidential Adverbs and Polarity: A Study from Spanish. Languages 8:4 ► pp. 243 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 april 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.