Supervisors: Sabine Iatridou, David Pesetsky (committee member), Kai von Fintel, and Irene Heim (committee member) Address: Universitaet Tuebingen Deutsches Seminar Wilhelmstr. 50 D-72074 Tuebingen Germany
To shed new light on the diachronic preconditions for the emergence of modal particles, this pape... more To shed new light on the diachronic preconditions for the emergence of modal particles, this paper pursues the following strategy. I will investigate a lexeme that has developed a wohl-type reading even though its source lexeme is not a wohl-type element: the lexeme schier (lit. ‘almost, downright’) in East Austrian German. I compare the diachronic development of schier (which originates in Middle High German schiere ‘soon’) to that of wohl and conclude, in Section 3, that the common denominator is a notion of scalarity. For concreteness’ sake, I sketch a formalization for wohl in Section 4. The objective of this little study is to show how case studies of dialectal phenomena can contribute to our understanding of more general patterns and developments.
To shed new light on the diachronic preconditions for the emergence of modal particles, this pape... more To shed new light on the diachronic preconditions for the emergence of modal particles, this paper pursues the following strategy. I will investigate a lexeme that has developed a wohl-type reading even though its source lexeme is not a wohl-type element: the lexeme schier (lit. ‘almost, downright’) in East Austrian German. I compare the diachronic development of schier (which originates in Middle High German schiere ‘soon’) to that of wohl and conclude, in Section 3, that the common denominator is a notion of scalarity. For concreteness’ sake, I sketch a formalization for wohl in Section 4. The objective of this little study is to show how case studies of dialectal phenomena can contribute to our understanding of more general patterns and developments.
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contribute to our understanding of more general patterns and developments.
contribute to our understanding of more general patterns and developments.