Polish jakoby: an exotic similative-reportive doughnut? Tracing the pathway and conditions of its rise

Abstract

Abstract Of similative origin, Polish jakoby derives from the connective jako ‘how, that’ univerbated with the irrealis enclitic by. From the earliest attested stages (late 14th century) into the 17th century, jakoby was used as a comparison marker and as a subordinator of manner or purpose clauses. The former use has persisted, and the latter was ousted. After the 16th century jakoby further evolved into a reportive marker, as a particle or complementizer. Contrary to what pathways explaining the connection between similative and evidential marking would suggest, jakoby’s now predominant function as a reportive marker was apparently not prepared by inferential use, nor was its complementizer function mediated by a purpose function. Instead, purpose and reportive complementizers belong to different “branches”, both of which can be motivated by an indiscriminate similative-manner function. The evidence in favor of this derives from a systematic evaluation of extant research and a corpus study covering almost the entire period from 1600 to our day. A crucial moment to understanding jakoby’s functional changes is the insight that similatives can acquire propositional scope prior to entering the evidential domain and marking a metonymic relation between speech acts and epistemic attitudes expressed by the former.