To HEL with implicature!

-- where HEL is HOTEL, History of the English language, as in the acronym used at Berkeley.

E. Traugott & R. Dasher, _Regularity in Semantic Change_.
Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521583780, xx+341p.
Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 96.
(as reviewed by D. Lewis, University of Oxford).

"_Regularity in Semantic Change_ (RSC) focuses on the semantic-pragmatic
interface. Traugott and Dasher (T&D) defend the position that there are
cross-linguistic unidirectional tendencies in semantic change, at least in
certain domains, and that internal semantic change largely
occurs as the conventionalization of implicature."

"A further claim is that speakers/writers are the key innovators
(implicatures are
controlled by the speaker/writer), hence the name of the theory proposed:
the 'Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change' (IITSC)."

"The major type of semantic change is claimed to be subjectification."

"The emphasis is on

"meaning changes that are primarily linguistic
and that have implications for constraints on
lexical insertion or grammatical function" (p. 11)."

"Evidence is presented from the areas (broadly construed) of modality and
deixis."

"The historical developments of modal verbs, discourse markers,
performative verbs and
social deixis are charted."

"Claims for unidirectional tendencies in semantic change have frequently
been made in studies of grammaticalization. Traugott, in previous work, has
examined the development of English discourse markers from a
grammaticalization perspective (e.g. Traugott 1995)."

"RSC argues that although

"the greatest degree of semantic regularity has
so far been found in conceptual structures the lexemes
of which are typically associated with grammaticalization"
(p. 3),

regularity in semantic change is not limited to grammaticalizing
lexemes."

"Regular patterns of semantic change are also found in other domains,

"especially lexemes that are verbal and
(in relevant languages) adjectival or adverbial"
(ibid.)."

"T&D do not dwell on the likely distinctions between the typical
developments in these
categories and those in nouns (or why nouns might be "particularly
susceptible to extralinguistic factors" (p.4)), but they keep the focus of
this book firmly on verbal and adverbial development."

"The IITSC is set out in the first chapter. Assuming a broadly cognitive
view of language, and drawing in part on ideas from prototype theory and
construction grammar, the IITSC aims to account for the semanticization of
pragmatic implicatures."

"The ITTSC focuses on the fact that "online-production and processing make
use of essentially
syntagmatic relations and associations" (p. 9), and posits that
associative, metonymic relationships are more important in change than
metaphorical, analogical ones."

"In simplified terms, the model has speakers/writers exploiting invited
inferences and re-weighting implicatures to the point where a lexeme
acquires a stable _utterance-type meaning_ (Levinson 2000), i.e. a default,
though defeasible, interpretation in a context type."

"This utterance-type meaning can then semanticize into a new sense,
Meaning(2), alongside
Meaning(1)."

"The path is:

From

i. coded meaning

to

ii. utterance-token meaning

to

iii. utterance-type (pragmatically polysemous) meaning

to

iv. new coded meaning (and so semantic polysemy).


"The mechanisms of such changes are said to be language-external, in that
they are processes of reasoning by speakers/writers (p. 40)."


"There follows (ch. 2) an overview of prior and current approaches to
semantic change, from Breal's still-influential categories of pejoration,
amelioration, contagion, etc. through to recent work in historical
pragmatics."

"From the early twentieth century, T&D draw particular attention to work on
change within semantic fields."

"From more recent research, they focus on analyses of metaphor and metonymy
by scholars of grammaticalization, on studies of subjectification, and on
the formulation of neo-Gricean pragmatic principles and the relevance of
these to semantic change."

"In particular, they build on Horn's neo-Gricean principles to argue for a
'Quantity-heuristic
('make your contribution sufficient', implying 'at most p'), a
Relevance-heuristic ('say no more than you must', implying 'at least p'),
and a Manner-heuristic ('avoid prolixity/marked expression-marked
situation')."

"It is application of the Relevance heuristic, they suggest, that can
result in semantic change of the type discussed in this book."

"The development in some modal verbs of epistemic meanings from deontic
meanings is described in detail in the next chapter. T&D present case
studies of the development of English 'must' (from ability/permission
through obligation to epistemic uses), English 'ought to' (from
possession 'have' through obligation to epistemic uses). These developments
evidence a tendency towards more speaker-oriented meaning, and so greater
subjectification. The forms' acquisition of modal meaning also involves
acquiring 'procedural meaning' in addition to 'content meaning'."

"The next case study is the development of adverbials with discourse
marking functions. Analyses of 'indeed', 'in fact', and 'actually' show how
the semantic development of each (manner or similar meaning -> epistemic
meaning -> elaborative or clarificatory connective) is
paralleled by its syntactic development involving ever-increasing scope
(VP-internal adverbial -> sentential adverbial -> clause-external discourse
marker)."

"'Well' and 'let's' then further exemplify the development of or extension
of intersubjective meaning."

"In all these cases, subjective and often intersubjective meanings develop
out of more objective, 'content' meanings."

"Chapter 5 describes the development of performative verbs and
constructions from non-performatives. Typical sources for performative
verbs are terms relating to visual perception, vocalization, mental states
and object manipulation. Detailed histories are given, again
emphasizing subjectification of meaning, of English 'promise'.

"The last main chapter deals with the development of social deictics."

"Regularities in semantic change are hard to pin down. Ullmann described
how, following Breal, in the 1880s-1930s period, scholars set out to
discover laws of semantic change, and to establish taxonomies of change.
But "the quest for 'laws' met with very limited success, and the
classificatory zeal resulted in a number of ambitious schemes built on
slender empirical data" (Ullmann 1962: 196). Slender empirical data can
still be a problem."

"The past two decades, however, have seen a renewal of interest in both
semantics and language change. Typological studies and grammaticalization
studies have both provided an impetus for a new look at the possibility of
universal pathways or tendencies in meaning change. RSC can be seen as a
product of such impetus."

"In past discussions of semantic change, perhaps too little attention has
been paid to

(a) the notion that different types (entities, attributes, predicates)
or semantic domains may tend to undergo different kinds of change by
different kinds of mechanism, and

(b) the relevance to semantic change of the context types (both textual and
communicative) in which lexemes regularly occur."

"RSC takes both into account."

"Moreover, many of the difficulties inherent in interpreting the sorts of
data with which historical pragmaticists have to work are acknowledged and
discussed."

"RSC assembles an extremely valuable range of case histories of lexical
semantic change and builds a persuasive argument for the importance of the
role of discourse context in
semantic change, and for gradual metonymic extension."

"One objection to the IITSC might be that the theory is not properly
predictive. But such predictability is not the aim. As Harris & Campbell
point out, "That the fact of change is not fully predictable does not
entail either that change is random or that the limits of change cannot be
stated" (1995:6). The claims of RSC are about what kinds of internal change
are most likely to occur, should change occur, and by what mechanisms."

"Internal (cognitive, psycholinguistic) and external (socio-political)
pressures for change may conflict. The main claim is that semantic change
is not random, but is subject to identifiable regular pressures which, when
they prevail over other, ad hoc pressures, lead to greater subjectivity of
meaning, by the gradual semanticization of pragmatic inferences resulting
from speaker/writer intention."

"Another, more substantive, possible objection concerns frequency. Claims
about regularities in change are necessarily statistical claims. The
unidirectional argument is an argument about
the relative frequency of particular semantic pathways, yet the statistical
significance of the changes discussed is not addressed in RSC. Ultimately,
for such generalized claims about change to be upheld, it will be necessary
to clarify what the semantic change population is and what sampling is
appropriate. This difficulty is perhaps a weakness of the semasiological
approach. The data are persuasive, but by electing to examine the histories
of small groups of 'successful' expressions belonging synchronically to
certain modal, subjective areas of meaning, and without any quantification,
it is hard to reach firm conclusions about semantic change in general. The
same applies to the claim that, at the level of individual lexemes, it
is 'preferred strategies' of speakers/writers that lead to semantic change,
since this is presumably a claim about frequency of strategy."

"Occasionally, the reader feels that categories are in danger of becoming
blurred. Four main pragmatic-semantic diachronic regularities are proposed
in RSC."

(1) -subjective -> +subjective

(2) contentful -> procedural

(3) increase in scope

(4) +truth-conditional -> -truth-conditional.


"This implies a semantic theory that posits at least these four parameters
of meaning. However, T&D do not claim they are necessarily independent of
each other (p. 284), and in fact their
status and inter-relations warrant further investigation and clarification."

"'Procedural meanings', for example, are described as "primarily indexical
of speaker/writer's attitude to the discourse and the participants in it;
they index metatextual relations between
propositions or between propositions and the non-linguistic context" (p.
10)."

"But it is not quite clear what the evidence is for the binary distinction,
nor whether contentful and procedural meanings are assumed to have
different cognitive qualities, nor exactly how 'procedural' relates to
'metatextual' or 'subjective' or even to 'pragmatic', with which it seems
sometimes to overlap (e.g., 'contentful meaning' is also contrasted with
'pragmatic meaning' (p. 96))."

"Overall, it is not immediately obvious that the contentful/procedural
distinction is necessary or useful to the main arguments of RSC."

"There is also some uncertainty over the status of subjectification, which
is described in the conclusion as "the main mechanism of semantic change"
(p. 279), when previous chapters had
seemed to argue that subjectification was a type of semantic change."

"We need many more detailed, quantitative analyses across time of lexical
tokens in their textual and communicative contexts. This is a task that
future studies in historical pragmatics, using large historical corpora,
should have much to contribute to. Meanwhile, RSC
is a most valuable contribution towards addressing this vast gap in our
understanding of language, and towards a better understanding of the
complexities of lexical semantic change."

References:

Harris, A & L. Campbell. Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Levinson, S. Presumptive Meanings: The theory of generalized conversational
implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Traugott, E. The role of the development of discourse markers in a theory
of grammaticalization'. Paper presented at the Twelfth International
Conference on Historical Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995.

Ullmann, S. Semantics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.