A syntactic approach to pragmaticalization

Abstract

This paper puts forward a syntactic account for the evolution of pragmatic expressions with a focus on sentence adverbs and modal particles. These go back to very different sources, ranging from adjectives or adverbs to focus particles to fully-fledged finite or non-finite clauses. The paper’s main aim is to identify the major characteristics and the driving force behind these developments. The proposal is built on recent synchronic approaches positing a syntactically encoded layer in sentential architecture which hosts projections related to evidential or epistemic speaker evaluation, to properties of the speech act and the like (e.g. Krifka 2023). It will be argued that it is this layer that propels pertinent diachronic processes of ‘pragmaticalization’ along different pathways. Based on Diewald’s (2011) notion of pragmaticalization as grammaticalization of discourse functions, pragmaticalization is defined syntactically as grammaticalization into this higher functional layer. This way, the key characteristics of the process and its differences to classical grammaticalization can be accounted for.