Cover not available

In:Particles in German, English, and Beyond
Edited by Remus Gergel, Ingo Reich and Augustin Speyer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 224] 2022
► pp. 243–268

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 9
Scalarity as a meaning atom in wohl-type particles

 | University of Oslo
Published online: 16 August 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.224.09gro
Abstract
German wohl ‘well’, Norwegian vel ‘well’ and French bien ‘well’ are all known to have a modal particle reading that roughly amounts to ‘surely, probably, I guess’ (see Zimmermann 2008; Fretheim 1991; Detges & Waltereit 2009). This paper addresses the question of how such a reading could have arisen from the source meaning of these elements (i.e. ‘well’). I propose an analysis of wohl-type (i.e. ‘well’-type) modal particles as scalar operators, which is based on the observation that each of them appears to have diachronically gone through an intermediate stage in which it was clearly a scalar modifier (namely wohl ‘approximately’, vel ‘approximately, more than’, and bien ‘very’). The core idea of my contribution is that the modal particle variant is still a scalar operator in nature, but has emerged through a shift in the type of scale that the particle operates on (in line with Beltrama’s 2015 approach to English totally). Scalarity thus emerges as a common meaning atom (or meaning molecule), in the spirit of von Fintel & Matthewson (2008: 154,172), which serves as a building block in the semantic makeup of wohl-type particles.
Article outline
  • 1.Background
  • 2.A modal particle puzzle
  • 3.The core proposal
  • 4.Evidence for a scalar source lexeme
  • 5.Evidence from overlap
  • 6.Support from dialectal variation
  • 7.Future directions / micro-parameters
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (42)
References
Aijmer, Karin. 1977. Partiklarna ju och väl. Nysvenska studier 57, 205–216.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1996. Swedish modal particles in a contrastive perspective. Language Sciences 18, 393–427. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. The Swedish modal particle väl in a contrastive perspective. Nordic Journal of English Studies 14, 174–200. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Andvik, Erik A. 1992. A Pragmatic Analysis of Norwegian Modal Particles. Dallas, Texas: SIL.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beltrama, Andrea. 2015. From Totally Dark to Totally Old. The Formal Semantics of Subjectification. In Eva Csipak and Hedde Zeijlstra (eds.): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 19, 125–142.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. #Unfortunately, you are bello tall. From beauty to intensification. Poster presented at the 90th LSA Annual Meeting, Washington, DC. URL: [URL]
Berg, Ivar. 2016. A note on the relationship between Scandinavian and Low German. Journal of Historical Linguistics 2, 189–210.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel, and Katharina Hartmann. 2001. The syntax and semantics of focus-sensitive particles in German. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19, 229–281. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burkhardt, Armin. 1994. Abtönungspartikeln im Deutschen: Bedeutung und Genese. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 22, 129–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davis, Henry, and Lisa Matthewson. 2016. Against all expectations: The meaning of St’át’imcets séna7. In Papers for the International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages 51, UBC Working Papers in Linguistics 42 , 37–67.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deo, Ashwini. 2014. Formal semantics/pragmatics and language change. In: Claire Bowern, and Bethwyn Evans (eds.): The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Routledge, 393–409.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Diachronic Semantics. The Annual Review of Linguistics 1, 179–197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DeReKo = The German Reference Corpus DeReKo, at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, [URL].
Detges, Ulrich, and Richard Waltereit. 2009. Diachronic pathways and pragmatic strategies: Different types of pragmatic particles from a diachronic point of view. In: Björn Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard, and Jacqueline Visconti (eds.): Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics. Bingley: Emerald, 43–61.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DeVeaugh-Geiss, Joseph. 2014. Wohl and the semantics of assumptions. MSc thesis, University of Potsdam.
Diewald, Gabriele. 2011. Pragmaticalization (defined) as grammaticalization of discourse functions. Linguistics 49, 365–390. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DWB = Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm. 16 Bde. in 32 Teilbänden. Leipzig 1854–1961. Quellenverzeichnis Leipzig 1971. Online-Version accessed on 23 August 2016, [URL].
Eckardt, Regine. 2011. Semantic Reanalysis and Language Change. Language and Linguistics Compass 5, 33–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eckardt, Regine, and Andrea Beltrama. 2019. Evidentials and Questions. In Christopher Pinon (ed.): Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 12, Paris: CSSP, 121–155.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Egg, Markus. 2012. Discourse particles at the semantics-pragmatics interface. In Werner Abrahm and Elisabeth Leiss (eds.): Modality and Theory of Mind elements across languages. Berlin: de Gruyter, 297–333. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
von Fintel, Kai, and Lisa Matthewson. 2008. Universals in Semantics. The Linguistic Review 25, 139–201. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fretheim, Thorstein. 1991. Formal and functional differences between S-internal and S-external modal particles in Norwegian. Multilingua 10, 175–200.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. Vel i spørresetninger: en pragmatisk analyse. Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift, 36, 5–39.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gehrke, Berit, and Elena Castroviejo. 2016. Good Manners: On the Degree Effect of Good Events. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 20 , 252–269.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Göbel, Alexander. 2018. Evidentiality and Undirected Questions: A New Account of the German Discourse Particle wohl. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 24.1, 77–86. [URL]
Grosz, Patrick Georg. 2017. Shedding new light on the wohl muddle: The particle schier in Austrian German. Wiener Linguistische Gazette (WLG) 82 [Themenheft 11-11-17. Festschrift für Martin Prinzhorn, ed. by Clemens Mayr and Edwin Williams], 71–78.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Discourse particles. In Daniel Gutzmann, Lisa Matthewson, Cécile Meier, Hotze Rullmann, and Thomas Ede Zimmermann (eds.): The Companion to Semantics (SemCom). Oxford: Wiley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1982. Scandinavian language structures: a comparative historical survey. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hügel, Franz Seraph. 1873. Der Wiener Dialekt: Lexikon der Wiener Volkssprache. Wien: A. Hartleben. [URL]
Lassiter, Daniel. 2016. Must, knowledge, and (in)directness. Natural Language Semantics 24, 117–163. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindner, Katrin. 1991. ‘Wir sind ja doch alte Bekannte.’ The use of German ja and doch as modal particles. In Werner Abraham (ed.): Discourse Particles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 163–201. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthewson, Lisa, and Henry Davis. 2018. Micro-variation in discourse particles: From St’át’imcets to German. Presentation at MIT Colloquium, 2nd November 2018.
NAOB = Det Norske Akademis Ordbok (Norwegian Academy Dictionary), [URL].
OMC = The Oslo Multilingual Corpus (1999–2008), the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, [URL].
Penka, Doris. 2006. Almost there: The meaning of almost. In Christian Ebert and Cornelia Endriss (eds.): Proceedings of the Sinn und Bedeutung 10, 275–286. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Swanson, Eric. 2006. Interactions With Context. Ph.D. thesis, MIT.
Thurmair, Maria. 1989. Modalpartikeln und ihre Kombinationen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth. 1989. On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: An example of subjectification in semantic change. Language 65, 31–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waltereit, Richard, and Ulrich Detges. 2007. Different functions, different histories: Modal particles and discourse markers from a diachronic point of view. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6, 61–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte. 2008. Discourse particles in the left periphery. In: B. Shaer et al. (eds.). Dislocated Elements in Discourse: Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Perspectives. London: Routledge, 200–231.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Discourse particles. In Paul Portner, Claudia Maienborn, and Klaus von Heusinger (eds.): Handbook of Semantics./Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2012–2038. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. Wird schon stimmen! A degree operator analysis of schon. Journal of Semantics 35, 687–739. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue