In:Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar
Edited by Martin Hilpert, Bert Cappelle and Ilse Depraetere
[Constructional Approaches to Language 32] 2021
► pp. 53–79
Exploring relative degrees of auxiliarization empirically in German modal constructions with wissen and verstehen
Does host class expansion provide enough evidence?
Published online: 12 October 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.32.03dek
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.32.03dek
Abstract
The present paper investigates which sort of
information – item- or feature-based – is more sufficient to quantify
relative degrees of auxiliarization. To understand this issue, the study
utilizes two German near-synonymous semi-schematic modal constructions with
wissen and verstehen. Sketching the
notion of host class expansion, the paper shows that the evidence of host
class expansion by gauging type frequency of co-occurring elements is often
used to demonstrate the increasing grammaticalization of a construction
within usage-based construction grammar. Applying a mixed-effects binary
logistic regression, the study ascertains a difference in the relative
degree of grammaticalization between the wissen- and
verstehen-construction by means of such usage features
as (a) the position of verbal complements, (b) the grammatical form of modal
auxiliaries, and (c) the animacy of subject referents. Comparing these
results with the counts of the co-occurring element types of each modal
construction, the analysis reveals that they contradict each other. As a
result, the usage feature-based behavior is considered to be more important
for deciding the relative degree of grammaticalization of semi-schematic
constructions than host class expansion.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Problem statement: Host class expansion in grammaticalization studies
- 3.Case study
- 3.1Constructions of dynamic modality with wissen and verstehen
- 3.2Data
- 3.3Response and fixed-effect variables
- 3.4Mixed-effects model and random-effect variables
- 4.Results and discussion
- 5.Conclusion
Notes Abbreviations References
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