Abstract
This study constitutes an exploratory analysis of the grammaticalization cline of anar (‘to go’) + infinitive in Catalan to express perfective past (e.g., va arribar ‘s/he arrived’). Our research interest primarily lies in diachronically tracing the evolution of this grammatical change, which appears to be unprecedented in other Romance languages (e.g., Spanish, French), in which the construction has instead led to the expression of a near and/or intentional future. A gap in research is found in the fact that there have been few corpus-based, pragmatic approaches to the matter. We base our theoretical framework on the definition of grammaticalization by Hopper and Traugott (2003) and a number of related publications (Alturo 2017, Pérez-Saldanya & Hualde 2003). Critical items (N=346) were retrieved from the diachronic corpus CICA (11th-18th c.) and subsequently analyzed in the light of pragmatic factors, establishing a three-stage cline based on Segura (2012). Results show how informative bridging contexts are in shaping grammaticalization processes, as they highlight the challenges of tracing a grammaticalization process based on corpora of literary texts. A discussion follows on the identification of potential next steps that might be useful in complementing our own research.
Highlights
This study constitutes an exploratory analysis of the grammaticalization path followed by the Catalan bigram anar (‘to go’) + infinitive between the earliest documentation of the language in the 11th century until the 18th century
Synchronic evidence shows that the grammaticalization of ‘to go’ + infinitive is widespread among Romance languages, and, since no instances thereof are documented in Classical Latin, we need to assume that this has entirely been an intra-Romance process
Once all relevant bigrams—along with their surrounding contexts—were retrieved, a threefold classification was established based on previous theoretical frameworks, after which all critical items underwent a manual labeling process according to the following distinctive stages of grammaticalization: (1) non-grammaticalized
Summary
This study constitutes an exploratory analysis of the grammaticalization path followed by the Catalan bigram anar (‘to go’) + infinitive between the earliest documentation of the language in the 11th century until the 18th century. Grammaticalization has been broadly studied in both non-Romance (e.g., English, German) and Romance contexts (e.g., French, Italian), including the field of Catalan Studies. Focusing on the latter, most studies have traditionally adopted the broad definition of grammaticalization, which encompasses related processes that are more precisely characterized in terms of pragmaticalization or discoursivization (Alturo & Chodorowska-Pilch 2009, Cuenca & Massip 2005). In Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French the grammaticalization of—respectively—ir/ir/andare/aller ‘to go’ + infinitive has resulted in a periphrasis that specializes in the expression of intentional and/or near future:
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