Paradigm formation: Changes of function and structure in German and Danish mood systems

Abstract

Recent studies in semantic change have agendas in common with the theory of grammaticalization and thus focus on processes of central interest to grammaticalization theory, namely generalization, bleaching and subjectification. One typical outcome of such processes is the addition of new diachronic meanings (“layering”), leading to a content side that involves more and more sprawling polysemic clusters. The study of morphological changes, however, provides instances of many other types of processes. This article discusses two such types: (1) a regrammation process, namely a change in paradigmatic organization, and (2) a specification of meaning, i.e. reduction rather than proliferation of meaning variants. Both will be illustrated with reference to the development of mood in German: it is a split from what was still in Middle High German one inflectional mood paradigm into three different mood paradigms in the modern standard High German language – and each of the separate paradigms involve a specification rather than proliferation in meaning. Our focus is on the characterization of semantic structure, but as in any usage-based grammatical model, the relation between structure and function is also considered. Former main functions of the subjunctive are promoted to the rank of structurally distinctive features between the modern paradigms, but the modern paradigm structure also contains content variation that was not grammaticalized in the older language – while other forms of content variation remains a matter of context of use. A comparison is offered with Middle Danish (showing a similar split of the older paradigm) and Modern Danish (the reverse process: loss of the distinction between the tense and mood paradigms). Again, regrammation processes like the ones studied show the importance of specification in semantic change and also of the importance of fine-grained language-specific analysis of grammatical content and its paradigmatic organization.