Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Nordeuropa-Institut

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titel – Workshop – Programm

 

Expressions of modality in Germanic: Competition and change


Workshop (hybrid)
September 15th, 2022

Nordeuropa-Institut, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Room: 3.134 and online

 

Workshop

This workshop is organised by Muriel Norde (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Phil Beier (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Kevin Müller (Universität Zürich) and Rie Obe (Osaka University), as part of the Collaborative Research Centre «Register», funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / German Research Foundation (SFB 1412; 416591334). The workshop is free of charge, but you are asked to register by sending an email to Phil Beier (phil.beier@hu-berlin.de). In our confirmation email you will also find the Zoom link to the workshop, in case you prefer to participate online.

The workshop is concerned with (changes in) expressions of modality in the histories of the Germanic languages. Modality can be broadly defined as “a linguistic category referring to the factual status of a proposition” (Narrog 2012: 6) which, according to Gregersen (2020: 54), “may be broad enough to cover both the domain of possibility and necessity and a number of subjective notions often considered modal, such as the speaker’s hope or wish that the proposition is true.” These communicative goals can be achieved by a variety of expressions, that are often in competition with each other: mood (subjunctive or imperative), modal auxiliaries, or modal adverbs such as Swedish kanske 'maybe', that developed out of a modal auxiliary and a main verb meaning 'to happen' or 'to be'. Earlier research (Diderichsen 1941, Ståhle 1958, Bjerrum 1966 & 1967) suggests that the choice between various expressions of modality depends on a number of contextual factors, such as subject type (human, animate, inanimate), person, or negation. In addition, textual function (e.g. direct or indirect instruction) may play a role (Beier et al. submitted), as may genre or register (Fritz 1997, Andersson 2007, Obe 2013, Westergaard 2020). This competition is associated with changes in distribution (e.g. between the obsolescent subjunctive and modal auxiliaries), but change is not restricted to competition. In the course of time, new modal auxiliaries (Krug 2000) or modal adverbs (Beijering & Norde 2019) emerge, modal auxiliaries change in form and / or meaning (Gregersen 2012), and so on. In order to gain a better understanding of modal expressions in older Germanic languages, of how they compete and how they change, we welcome corpus-based studies that can be either semasiological (e.g. focusing on a specific modal or group of modals) or onomasiological (e.g. focusing on different expressions of a specific meaning) in nature, based on a single language or a comparison of two languages or more. The research questions we want to address during this workshop include:

  • How do modal auxiliaries or adverbs grammaticalise and how do they change?
  • Is there a relation between loss of the subjunctive and emergence and / or increasing frequency of modal auxiliaries?
  • Which (contextual, functional or (meta-)textual) factors determine the choice between competing expressions?
  • More specifically, is there a relation between register and (changes in) modal expressions?
  • What is the role of language contact, such as the impact of Latin on early written vernaculars?
  • What are differences and similarities between changes in modal expressions across the Germanic languages?
 

Programme
 

References
  • Andersson, Peter. 2007. Modalitet och förändring En studie av må och kunna i fornsvenska. Göteborgsstudier i nordisk språkvetenskab 10. Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet.
  • Beier, Phil, Gohar Schnelle & Silke Unverzagt. submitted. Intra-writer variation in Old High German and Old Swedish: The impact of social role relationship on constructing instructions.
  • Beijering, Karin & Muriel Norde. 2019. Adverbial semi-insubordination constructions in Swedish: Synchrony and Diachrony. In Beijering, Karin, Gunther Kaltenböck & María Sol Sansiñena (Eds.) Insubordination. Theoretical and empitical issues, 79-106. Berlin / New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
  • Bjerrum, Anders. 1966. Grammatik over Skånske Lov efter B74. København: Gyldendal.
  • Bjerrum, Anders. 1967. Grammatik over De sjællandske Love efter AM 455 12 Med tillæg om Jyske Lov efter Flensborghåndskriftet . København: Gyldendal.
  • Brøndum-Nielsen, Johannes & Aakjær, Svend. 1933. Skånske Lov. Text I-III. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel.
  • Diderichsen, Paul. 1941. Sætningsbygningen i skaanske Lov. Fremstillet som Grundlag for en rationel dansk Syntaks. København: Ejnar Munksgaard.
  • Fritz, Gerd. 1997. Historische Semantik der Modalverben. Problemskizze – Exemplarische Analysen – Forschungsüberblick. In Fritz & Gloning (Eds.). Untersuchungen zur semantischen Entwicklungsgeschichte der Modalverben im Deutschen . Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1-158.
  • Gregersen, Sune. 2020. Early English modals. Form, function and analogy. Amsterdam: LOT (LOT dissertation series 579).
  • Krug, Manfred G. 2000. Emerging English modals. A corpus-based study of grammaticalization. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Narrog, Heiko. 2012. Modality, subjectivity and semantic change. A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Obe, Rie. 2013. Modalverbernes semantiske system i gammeldansk. PhD dissertation, Roskilde University.
  • Ståhle, Carl Ivar. 1958. Syntaktiska och stilistiska studier i fornnordiskt lagspråk. Lund: Carl Bloms Boktryckeri.
  • Tamm, Ditlev & Vogt, Helle. 2016. The Danish Medieval Laws. The Laws of Scania, Zealand and Jutland. London / New York: Routledge.
  • Westergaard, Lennart. 2020. Frekvens og modalverbumparadigmets semantiske udvikling fra ældre nydansk til moderne dansk. Ny forskning i grammatik, 27, 147-164.
 

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