Acquisitive modals

Johan van der Auwera | University of Antwerp |

Petar Kehayov | University of Tartu

Alice Vittrant | University of Aix-en-Provence

The paper explores the fact that ‘get’ etymons may acquire modal meanings. It tries to fit this fact into the modal map proposal of van der Auwera & Plungian (1998) and concludes that the map has to be revised, in part because the lexical input, the predicates meaning ‘get/acquire’ allow more than one reading, an agentive and a receptive one. The paper focuses on the two areas in which so-called ‘acquisitiv modality’ is very prominent, viz. Northern Europe and South(east) Asia.

Published online: 30 November 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.148.11auw

Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

Beijering, Karin

2011. Semantic change and grammaticalization: The development of modal and postmodal meanings in Mainland Scandinavian må, måtte and måste. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 34:2 ► pp. 105 ff.

Georgakopoulos, Thanasis & Stéphane Polis

2018. The semantic map model: State of the art and future avenues for linguistic research. Language and Linguistics Compass 12:2 ► pp. e12270 ff.

Gluckman, John & Margit Bowler

2020. The expression of modality in Logoori. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 41:2 ► pp. 195 ff.

Gregersen, Sune

2020. Language death, modality, and functional explanations. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 52:1 ► pp. 117 ff.

Hansen, Bjorn

2014. In Modes of Modality [Studies in Language Companion Series, 149], ► pp. 89 ff.

LINDSTRÖM, LIINA & VIRVE-ANNELI VIHMAN

2017. Who needs it? Variation in experiencer marking in Estonian ‘need’-constructions. Journal of Linguistics 53:04 ► pp. 789 ff.

Pakerys, Jurgis

2016. In Argument Realization in Baltic [Valency, Argument Realization and Grammatical Relations in Baltic, 3], ► pp. 427 ff.

Usoniene, Aurelija & Erika Jasionyte

2010. Towards grammaticalization: Lithuanian acquisitive verbsgauti(‘get’) andtekti(‘be gotten’). Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 42:2 ► pp. 199 ff.

Wilson, Brianna & Cynthia Hansen

2019. The role of negation in the grammaticalization of ability verbs. Diachronica 36:4 ► pp. 546 ff.

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