According to NP: A Diachronic Perspective on a Skeptical Evidential

Abstract

One of the problems challenging formal semantic studies of evidentiality is that reportative evidentials are not always representative of the speaker’s endorsement of the truth of the propositions they qualify. Accordingly, many of the functions of the reportative evidential according to NP in English are often ambiguous as to the speaker’s endorsement of the propositions over which they have scope. The present study, using three diachronic corpora, traces the evolution of evidential meanings in according to NP since Middle English times from its origins in a progressive aspect construction and its later shift from a manner adverbial function to a reportative evidential used to justify the speaker’s subjective beliefs. The article shows that the presence of comparative contexts, multiple information sources, or co-occurrence with adversative clauses contributes to the use of the reportative as a dubitative, marking the gradual objectification of the proposition qualified by according to and coinciding closely with the introduction of the complex preposition in accordance with in the late eighteenth century. I argue that the diachronic development of according to NP as an evidential marker represents a case of co-optation rather than grammaticalization.