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Book of Abstracts
Hour/Hora Tuesday/Martes/Dimarts 13/04/2021 Hour/Hora Wednesday/Miércoles/Dimecres 14/04/2021
8.30 Opening Session/Inauguración/Inauguració 9.00-10.00 Jan Nuyts (University of Antwerp): “(Inter)subjectivity”
9.00-10.00 Alexandra Aikhenvald (James Cook University): “Todos lo saben: 10.00-10.30 Break/Descanso/Descans
sharing knowledge through evidentiality systems”
10.30-11.00 Hans Kronning (Uppsala University): “Quantifiers of Factual Proximity
10.00-10.30 Break/Descanso/Descans
and Counterfactuality in Romance: Un instant après, le train déraillait
10.30-11.00 Kasia Jaszczolt (University of Cambridge): “Speaking about time
(‘aurait déraillé’)”
and the lexicon / grammar / pragmatics trade-off”
11.00-11.30 Louis De Saussure (Université de Neuchâtel): “Pragmatic 11.00-11.30 Katrin Betz & Hans-Ingo Radatz (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg):
resolutions of temporal and aspectual semantic mismatches” “The Demodalisation of the Spanish Subjunctive: Is the ‘Non-Asserted
Subordinate Construction’ [S [que Vsubj] (/ Vind)] falling into disuse in
11.30-12.00 Break/Descanso/Descans
Spoken Spanish?”
12.00-12.30 Alda Mari (Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS): “Belief and question
raisability” 11.30-12.00 Break/Descanso/Descans
12.30-13.00 Manuel Pérez Saldanya (Universitat de València) & José Ignacio 12.00-12.30 Jorge Fernández Jaén (Universidad de Alicante): “El presente gramatical
Hualde (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): “De las y su relación con la (inter)subjetividad y el conocimiento compartido”
hendidas a las construcciones justificativas con es que”
12.30-13.00 José Luis Cifuentes Honrubia (Universidad de Alicante): “(No) faltaría/
13.00-15.30 Break/Descanso/Descans faltaba más: negación encubierta, miratividad y modalidad epistémica”
15.30-16.00 Scott Schwenter (The Ohio State University): “The role of context
13.00-15.30 Break/Descanso/Descans
in Imperative Form Choice”
16.00-16.30 María Marta García Negroni (Universidad de San Andrés): 15.30-16.00 María Luisa Rivero (University of Ottawa): “Epistemic futures and aspect:
“Miratividad y tiempos verbales. Acerca de los valores de sorpresa a cross-linguistic perspective”
del futuro, del imperfecto y del pluscuamperfecto” 16.00-16.30 Susana Rodríguez Rosique (Universidad de Alicante): “Future and
16.30-17.00 Patrícia M. Amaral (Indiana University Bloomington): “Revisiting mirativity once again: The Spanish construction No ir fut. a + infinitive”
verbs and plurality”
16.30-17.00 Josep Martines (Universitat d’Alacant): “El condicional evidencial
17.00-17.30 Break/Descanso/Descans reportativo en catalán antiguo: información compartida y
17.30-18.00 Alexandre Veiga (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela): gramaticalización”
“El modelo de análisis vectorial y la plurifuncionalidad
17.00-17.30 Break/Descanso/Descans
modo-temporal en el sistema verbal español”
18.00-18.30 Vicent Salvador (Universitat Jaume I): “Condicionalidad y modo 17.30-18.00 Jordi M. Antolí Martínez (Universitat d’Alacant): “La gramaticalización de
verbal en construcciones fraseológicas: estudio de casos en la perífrasis tenir + participio en catalán antiguo (s. XIII-XVI)”
español y catalán” 18.00-18.30 José Antonio Candalija Reina (Universidad de Alicante): “Las formas no
18.30-19.00 Elena Sánchez-López (Universitat d’Alacant): “Grados de personales y sus usos anómalos en relación con los modos verbales”
abstracción e información compartida”
18.30-19.00 Sandra Montserrat (Universitat d’Alacant): “Habitud, frecuencia y
generalidad en las perífrasis aspectuales del catalán antiguo y medieval:
gramaticalización e inferencia invitada”
19:00-19:30 Elisa Barrajón López (Universidad de Alicante): “Los sentidos
secundarios de los verbos procedentes de gentilicios: el caso de
afrancesarse”International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
Todos lo saben: sharing knowledge through evidentiality systems
Alexandra Aikhenvald (James Cook University)
Every language has a variety of ways of expressing how one knows what one is
talking about. In quite a few of the world's languages, one has to always specify the
information source through grammatical means. Evidentiality — grammaticalized
marking of information source — is a versatile phenomenon, loved by journalists and
general public alike. Evidential systems vary. In some, one has to just specify whether
the information was obtained via a speech report, leaving other sources vague. In others,
one has to indicate whether the speaker saw the event happen, didn't see it but heard it
(or smelt it), made an inference about it based on visible traces, reasoning or common
knowledge, or was told about it. Evidential terms may combine reference to the
information sources of the speaker and of the addressee and to information shared by
everyone.
A special term for ‘common knowledge’ is a feature of a few large systems of
evidentials, including Yongning Na, a Tibeto-Burman language from China. Or sharing
information source and common knowledge may be intrinsic to just one evidential term.
In Tariana, an Arawak language from Brazil, this is achieved through an evidential
whose overall meaning can be described as assumption based on logical inference from
general facts.
A ‘common knowledge’ evidential expresses what is known to the whole
community, as part of their shared experience to the exclusion of outsiders— much like
‘What everybody knows’ in the Spanish 2018 mystery-crime-drama film echoing the
topic of this talk. A ‘common knowledge’ evidential will also be used to retell the lore
and traditional knowledge passed down from one generation to the next. What are the
overtones of the forms expressing ‘common knowledge'? And what happens when a
language becomes obsolescent and traditional knowledge slides into oblivion?
In Southern Tepehuan (or O'dam), a Uto-Aztecan language, one reported evidential
expresses information previously known to the addressee. The other reported form
marks what the addressee may already know, or what is known to both speaker and
addressee. Maaka, a Chadic language, distinguishes two visual evidentials — one to
refer to something seen by both the speaker and the addressee, and the other one visible
just to the speaker. Information sharing can be expressed within several terms in the
system. Some Nambikwara languages of Brazil have different marking for individual
1Book of Abstracts
knowledge by the speaker and ‘dual’ knowledge by the speaker and by the addressee. In
South Conchucos Quechua
In its meanings and uses, evidentials interact and overlap with other major groups of
meanings related to knowledge. These include egophoricity, or grammatical expression
of access to knowledge, mirativity, or grammatical expression of expectation of
knowledge; and also epistemic modality, or grammatical expression of attitude to
knowledge.
***
Revisiting verbs and plurality
Patrícia M. Amaral (Indiana University Bloomington)
This talk focuses on a frequentative periphrasis found in Brazilian Portuguese (BP),
formed by the verb viver ‘to live’ and a verb in the gerund, and analyzes its aspectual
and evaluative properties. Building on data from contemporary BP (Corpus NILC/São
Carlos as well as current data from Twitter), I propose that the evaluative meaning of
the periphrasis (a negative evaluation of the high number of event repetitions) is
associated with its aspectual meaning of a large and non-specific number of event
iterations. Evaluative meanings of plurals are attested both in the nominal and in the
verbal domain across languages (Corbett 2000). In Portuguese, they can also be found
in the interpretation of the suffix -ada, which selects for nominal bases and yields a
noun denoting a set of a large and non-specific cardinality (e.g. garotada ‘(too) many
kids, large and unorganized group of kids’). In this talk I reassess a previous proposal
regarding the theoretical status of the negative implication of pluractional forms
(Amaral 2013) and discuss in particular its context-dependence. I take into account both
data from the nominal domain and data from other verbal periphrases in Ibero-Romance
that also convey event plurality.
***
2International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
La gramaticalización de la perífrasis tenir + participio en catalán antiguo
(s. XIII-XVI)
Jordi M. Antolí Martínez (Universitat d’Alacant)
This study deals with the grammaticalization process of the aspectual periphrasis
tenir + participle in Old Catalan. In the current language, this periphrasis has a
perfective/resultative value (Gavarró & Laca 2002, 2708-2710) and it is an innovation
in Catalan –and other Romance languages– of the 15th and 16th centuries. Our point of
departure is the dyachronic study of the semantic reanalysis of the structure tenir +
participle between the 13th-16th centuries. In order to do so, we have embarked in
corpora analysis (the study is based on the analysis of more than a thousand examples
obtained from the CIGCA) and have adopted a theoretical framework taken from the
Cognitive Linguistics, using the concept of (inter)subjectivation by E. C. Traugott
(Traugott 2010) and Traugott’s Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change
(IITSC). We agree with previous studies on this periphrasis in other languages (Sanz
2015), or on the grammaticalization of HABERE as an auxiliary verb (Jacob 1998,
Pinkster 1987, Salvi 1987, etc.), that the change started in contexts in which the
participle had a predicative function oriented to a direct object selected by tenir, with a
durative-resultative value. Starting from this context, and as the result of a process of
gradual subjectivation caused by contextual invited inferences, the construction will be
re-analysed and will assume progressively more subjective values between the 15th and
16th centuries. Starting from these meanings, we observe the emergence –in the mid-
15th century– of pragmatic uses of an intersubjective nature, as intensifiers or
attenuators of epistemic commitment and as metadiscursive markers.
References
Gavarró, A., & Laca, L. (2002). Les perífrasis temporals, aspectuals i modals. In J. Solà,
M. R. Lloret, J. Mascaró, & M. Pérez-Saldanya (Eds.), Gramàtica del Català
Contemporani (Vol. 3, pp. 2663–2726). Editorial Empúries.
Jacob, D. (1998). A propos de la périphrase habeo + participe parfait passif. In L.
Callebat (Ed.), Latin vulgaire-latin tardif IV (pp. 367–381). Olms-Weidmann.
Pinkster, H. (1987). The Strategy and Chronology of the Development of Future and
Perfect Tense Auxiliaries in Latin. In M. Harris & P. Ramat (Eds.), Historical
Development of Auxiliaries (pp. 193-223). De Gruyter Mouton.
3Book of Abstracts
Salvi, G. (1987). Syntactic Restructuring in the Evolution of Romance Auxiliaries. In
M. Harris & P. Ramat (Eds.), Historical Development of Auxiliaries (pp. 225–
236). Mouton de Gruyter.
Sanz Martín, Blanca Elena (2015). Evolución de la construcción tener + participio. De
la predicación secundaria a la perífrasis. In Ch. Melis & M. Flores (Eds.), El
siglo XIX. Inicio de la tercera etapa evolutiva del español (pp. 119–172).
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Traugott, E. C. (2010). (Inter)subjectivity and (inter)subjectification: A reassessment. In
K. Davidse, L. Vandelanotte, & H. Cuyckens (eds.), Subjectification,
Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization. Topics in English Linguistics (pp.
29–71). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
***
Los sentidos secundarios de los verbos procedentes de gentilicios: el caso de
afrancesarse
Elisa Barrajón López (Universidad de Alicante)
Gentilic words have a primary meaning found in any dictionary (‘belonging to or
relative to’), from which different secondary meanings are originated and developed
over time. As Morera and García Padrón (2013) point out, the most frequent secondary
variants usually refer to people, due to that close link that exists between the human
being and the place from which he comes from, and refer, fundamentally, to habits,
customs, attitudes, characteristics, vices, etc. of designated people. Our purpose is to
know if these secondary meanings can also affect the deadjetival unit that we have
chosen (afrancesarse), obtained from the gentilic (francés), as well as the meliorative or
pejorative meanings that this unit has been able to acquire over time. However, we must
bear in mind that the adjective that constitutes the basis of this verbal unit ceases to be a
relational adjective and is re-categorized into a qualifying adjective (González 2004:
67). The interpretation of a relational adjective as a qualifying requires that its relational
meaning, which implies belonging to a certain place (francés ʽde Franciaʼ), becomes
a qualitative meaning, based on the denotation of a series of characteristic properties
that come from certain stereotyped cultural traits, determined extralinguistically. In
order to analyze all these features, we will work both with the transitive variant
4International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
(afrancesar), which has a factitive-causative sense (“make acquire one or some of the
defining qualities of the element that acts as a base”) and with the pronominal variant of
the verb (afrancesarse), which responds to an inchoative sense (“to acquire one or more
of the qualities represented by the base term”). Finally, we have used two corpus
(Corpus Diacrónico del Español and Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual) to
extract the occurrences that will allow us to corroborate the different meanings.
***
The Demodalisation of the Spanish Subjunctive: Is the ‘Non-Asserted Subordinate
Construction’ [S [que Vsubj] (/ Vind)] falling into disuse in Spoken Spanish?
Katrin Betz & Hans-Ingo Radatz (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg)
The Spanish subjunctive has been described by some as an inflection expressing
mood, by others as a marker of subordination. In this contribution we argue that both
functions can be observed and that they correspond to different stages of the same
grammaticalisation path. Subjunctives increasingly become associated with
subordination and lose their modal semantics in the process. We then proceed to model
the various uses of the Spanish subjunctives within a Construction Grammar
framework. An abstract SubordSub Construction with the formal schematic structure [S
[CONJ Vsubj] ] is posited as the basis from which five more specific subjunctive
constructions are derived. Of these, two function as simple markers of subordination
(ModAgr and ModTrigg Construction); one has followed a grammaticalisation path in
which its semantics has come to be identical with a conventional imperative (the
HonImp Construction). The Deontic Construction accounts for what has traditionally
been described as the “subjunctive in independent main clauses”. Only the fifth and last,
the NonAssertion Construction, has a semantics which corresponds to the traditional
assertion vs. non-assertion analysis. In order to evaluate the proposed theory, we will
suggest strategies for corpus-based empirical evidence.
***
5Book of Abstracts
(No) faltaría/faltaba más: negación encubierta, miratividad y modalidad epistémica
José Luis Cifuentes Honrubia (Universidad de Alicante)
The aim of this paper is to analyze the Spanish construction (no)faltaba/faltaría
más, its behavior and origin. We start from all the examples provided in the CDH and
CORPES for forms faltaba and faltaría + más. The data analysis shows that the variant
no faltaba más is the first in time, and the most used. The variant no faltaría más seems
to have arisen from no faltaba más, and it is much less frequent. The variant without
negation faltaría más appeared later (20th century), but it would have been more
successful in use, even to compete in recent years with no faltaba más. Faltaba más is
less frequent than the previous ones, but it is having a certain success at the end of the
20th century. We analyze also its formal characteristics.
We check that the evolution from full syntactic construction to epistemic discursive
marker is due to focalization. The syntactic construction, whether in imperfect or in
conditional, was syntactically focused. A further step in such focusing entails its
phonetic reinforcement and its syntactic and semantic grammaticalization, insofar as it
goes from being a full but focused syntactic construction to a focusing element of the
previous content as epistemic reinforcement and it is isolated from the full
constructional value.
We differentiate six meanings for this construction: a) rejection of something
previously expressed; b) confirmation of a previous negative piece of information; c)
confirmation of a previous positive piece of information; d) politeness; e) emphatic
anticipatory use; f) confirmation according to a certain scheme of expectations. We give
account for the evolutionary relationship between these meanings.
Finally, we claim that the construction does not involve any type of covert negation,
but rather that the grammaticalization as an interjective sentential idiom of an
exclamative nature develops exclamatory intensified epistemic values manifesting
surprise, and we give account for their epistemological link.
***
6International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
El presente gramatical y su relación con la (inter)subjetividad y el conocimiento
compartido
Jorge Fernández Jaén (Universidad de Alicante)
For some time now, studies about evidentiality have begun to explore the link
between the grammatical coding of information sources and the expression of tense and
aspect. Within this line of research, it is worth highlighting the works that have recently
described the evidential nature of future (cfr. Escandell Vidal, 2010, 2014; Rodríguez
Rosique, 2019). Our paper will present a study which delves deeper into this field of
study, focusing on the interaction between evidentiality and grammatical present.
Taking specific works as a reference (cfr. Visser, 2015; Langacker, 2017,
Kratochvílová, 2018) and adopting a cognitive point of view, we will try to provide
evidence that present can assume evidential values —above all, visual and inferential
ones— in Spanish. Our analysis will be exemplified with certain uses of perception
verbs, which illustrate the interaction of tense, (inter)subjectivity (cfr. Verhagen, 2005)
and the information source in a particularly clear way.
***
Mirativity and tenses. On the values of surprise of Imperfecto and
Pluscuamperfecto in the Spanish of Argentina
María Marta García Negroni (Universidad de San Andrés)
In this presentation, I will describe the different meanings of surprise associated to
certain uses of Imperfecto and Pluscuamperfecto in the Spanish of Argentina, such as
shown in examples (1) to (4) below:
1. [A to B while opening the front door] ¡Ay! ¡Eras rubia!
Oh! You were blond!!
2. [A to B, on noticing that B has money in his wallet] ¡Al final tenías plata! (uttered with a
circunflex tome)
So you did have some money!
3. ¡Habías sido travieso vos!
So you turned out to be really naughty!
4. [A to B, on seeing that B is smoking] ¿No (era que) habías dejado de fumar vos? (uttered
with a circunflex tome)
7Book of Abstracts
Hadn’t you given up smoking?
My aim is to contrast the subjective stances of surprise emerging as a response to
the different dialogic frames prompting mirative enunciations which include specific
uses of the above mentioned tenses. From a dialogic and argumentative approach, I
intend to show how these mirative enunciations can be explained as being dialogically
“caused” by the argumentative representation of: a) a sudden discovery related to
something that contradicts a previous belief or assumption (cf. (1), (2), (4)) and b) a
sudden discovery that unleashes something not previously perceived (cf.
(3)). Furthermore, and with the purpose of evincing the bonds that can be established
between mirativity and evidentiality, I will exhaustively describe the meaning that is
embodied in utterances like those in (2) and (4), in which the counter-expectation
subjective reaction of surprise must be interpreted as associated to a previous discourse.
I refer, in fact, to mirative enunciations that include quotative evidential points of view
(POVs) as part of their meaning. As opposed to simple mirative enunciations, like those
shown in (1) and (3), mirative enunciations displaying evidential POVs, occur as
motivated by a complex mirative-evidential cause. Therefore, in this work I will argue
that in cases like (2) and (4), the enunciation of surprise emerges as a dialogic response
to a discovery which, at the same time, opposes previous beliefs or assumptions based
on prior discourses which necessarily need to be identified as a constitutive part of the
meaning at stake.
***
Speaking about time and the lexicon/grammar/pragmatics trade-off
Kasia M. Jaszczolt (University of Cambridge)
A language is tensed when it contains grammaticalised expressions that stand for
temporal reference. These have to be absolute rather than relative, that is the coding
time has to constitute the deictic centre. By this criterion, languages such as Yukatek
Maya, Mandarin Chinese, Paraguayan Guaraní, Burmese, Dyirbal, Kalaallisut, or Hopi
are tenseless. In addition, these languages vary with respect to the number and types of
other markers of temporal reference such as relative tenses, utilisation of aspect and
mood, or temporal adverbials. Next, some languages, like Thai, have optional markers
8International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
of temporality. Finally, different tensed languages grammaticalise different distinctions
and with different degrees of specificity.
In this talk I present evidence and arguments in favour of a contextualist semantic
account of temporal reference in natural language that accounts for this diversity of
means. First, the theories of covert grammatical tense and semantic restrictions on time
reference are argued to be unsuitable in that they do not generalise. Next, I make use of
two observations in order to formalize temporal reference for tensed as well as tenseless
languages: (i) that pragmatic inference and recognition of cultural, social and cognitive
defaults (that is, defaults that account for the assumed rationality and informativeness of
the statements speakers make) play a significant role in ranking the salience of
interpretations and (ii) that there is a wide-spread use of markers of modality to convey
temporal reference. Using the concepts of defaults, inference, and modal foundations of
temporality (as epistemic remoteness), I demonstrate how to represent temporal
reference in the contextualist theory of Default Semantics. I conclude with a discussion
of (i) the status of these representations as conceptual structures and (ii) how different
ways of expressing temporal reference favoured by different languages, that I call
lexicon-grammar-pragmatics trade-offs, can be accommodated in this approach.
***
Quantifiers of Factual Proximity and Counterfactuality in Romance: Un instant
après, le train déraillait (‘aurait déraillé’)
Hans Kronning (Uppsala University)
Quantifiers of Factual Proximity (QPF) (Kronning 2017, 2019) are a particular kind
of constructions (FRENCH: un mot de plus ‘one more word’, un instant après ‘a moment
later’) in Romance languages which function as counterfactual protases:
1. Un mot de plus /et/ je t’aurais tué
‘One more word /and/ I would have killed you’.
These constructions have a propensity for combining with apodoses in the
counterfactual Imperfect Indicative denoting axiologically marked eventualities (‘kill’,
‘go off the rails’):
2. Un instant après /et/ le train déraillait [IMPF IND].
‘A moment later /and/ the train would have gone off the rails.’
This construction should be kept apart from the factual construction in (3):
9Book of Abstracts
3. Un instant après /*and/ le train déraillait.
‘A moment later the train went off the rails.’
Previous research on these constructions, mostly in French linguistics (Guillaume
1929, Berthonneau & Kleiber 2003, 2006, Bres 2006, 2009), has focused mainly on the
distinction between the constructions (2) and (3), and not on the QFPs, which have not
been identified and conceptualized as such. In this presentation the conceptualization of
these quantifiers will be clarified and elaborated.
***
Belief and question raisability
Alda Mari (Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS)
We propose a new analysis of subjunctive with epistemic predicates in Italian
(credere ‘believe’, pensare ‘think’...), that is faithful to the initial intuition in Giorgi and
Pianesi (1996) that subjunctive choice is driven by structural properties of the common
ground. We show that subjunctive with ‘believe’ is driven by the raisability of p, as a
question that can be answered. To differentiate questions that can be answered from
those that cannot, we rely on a series of previously unseen contrasts and show a new
correlation with mood choice. We cast the analysis of raisability of question in a new
framework and then extend the analysis to other representational predicates with a focus
on fictional ones. While the analysis is faithful to the idea that subjunctive is sensitive to
non-homogeneity of modal spaces, we argue for a pragmatic view that bridges the gap
between verbal and sentential mood.
***
El condicional evidencial reportativo en catalán antiguo: información compartida
y gramaticalización
Josep Martines (Universitat d’Alacant)
The Reprise Evidential Conditional (REC) is nowadays not very common in
Catalan: its use is restricted to journalistic language and to some very formal registers
(such as academic or legal language) and it isn't present in spontaneous discourse. It
10International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
was relatively frequent in Old Catalan, though - an observation which had until now
been absent from linguistic descriptions of Old Catalan.
We will synthesize the rise of the conditional as an epistemic and evidential marker
in reporting contexts in Old Catalan. The process studied begins with a situation in
which the conditional 1.) marks the epistemic position of the source with regard to a
given state of affairs; it then moves toward 2.) marking the epistemic position of the
speaker with regard to the propositional content expressed in the source and,
particularly, his non-commitment to this content. Subjectivisation and
intersubjectivisation are identified as decisive factors for an understanding of the
various semantic and pragmatic facets that Reprise Evidential Conditionals may exhibit.
The ongoing grammaticalisation process allowed conditionals from the 15th century
onward to function without any further lexical or discursive devices as an epistemic and
evidential marker in and of itself. We will focus precisely on this last stage of
grammaticalisation in which the conditional begins to not be introduced by verbs of
diction, perception, knowledge or opinion.
***
Consideraciones previas sobre acostumar (a/de) + infinitivo. Del aspecto habitual al
aspecto genérico en una perífrasis ligada a la formalidad
Sandra Montserrat (Universitat d’Alacant)
First considerations concerning acostumar (a / de) + infinitive in catalana. From the
habitual aspect to the generic aspect in a periphrasis linked to formal register. This study
is part of a project that aims at providing a complete analysis on the aspectual verb
periphrases in Catalan from the Middle Ages to the end of the 17th century. We analyze
the periphrasis (a)costumar (Ø/a/de)+infinitive and study the semantic evolution of this
construction from the Middle Ages to the end of the 16th century. Our data comes from
textual corpora provided both by CICA and CIGCA. Our initial hypothesis is that
(a)costumer (Ø/a/de)+infinitive in medieval Catalan conveys a large possibility of
meanings that are based on invited inferencing (Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic
Change, TCSII) (Traugott & Dasher 2002: 38; Traugott 2012). Specifically, we are
interested in the origin of these three basic meanings for this periphrasis: habitual,
frequentative, and generic aspect. In this article, we present some considerations about
11Book of Abstracts
periphrasis in current Catalan in relation to these three meanings and their use in formal
register. This is the first step to starting the analysis of periphrasis in the ancient
language.
***
(Inter)subjectivity
Jan Nuyts (University of Antwerp)
In this talk I will present an overview of the current state of the art in the analysis of
the notion of subjectivity vs intersubjectivity as defined in Nuyts (2001, 2012, 2014,
2015). This concept was originally developed in the context of research on the modal
categories, as an alternative for the notion of subjectivity vs objectivity as defined
among others by Lyons (1977) and until today adopted by many or most scholars in the
field. The present notion is applicable beyond the traditional modal categories, however,
and is potentially relevant for the analysis of everything to do with how a speaker
conceptualizes and handles his/her position, particularly in the domain of attitudes
towards things in the world, relative to the position of his/her interlocutors in discourse.
As such, there is a strong interactive dimension to the notion, as a means to signal
common ground vs disagreement. I will also compare the notion with the concept of
mirativity, with which it has much in common.
References
Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics. Cambridge University Press.
Nuyts, J. (2001). Subjectivity as an evidential dimension in epistemic modal
expressions. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 383–400.
Nuyts, J. (2012). Notions of (inter)subjectivity. English Text Construction, 5, 53–76.
Nuyts, J. (2014). Subjectivity in modality, and beyond. In A. Zuczkowski, R. Bongelli,
I. Riccioni, & C. Canestrari (Eds.), Communicating certainty and uncertainty in
medical, supportive and scientific contexts (pp. 13–30). John Benjamins.
Nuyts, J. (2015). Subjectivity: Between discourse and conceptualization. Journal of
Pragmatics, 86, 106–110.
***
12International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
De las hendidas a las construcciones justificativas con es que
Manuel Pérez Saldanya (Universitat de València) & José Ignacio Hualde (University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
In this presentation we examine the grammaticalization process that has resulted in
the reanalysis of the Spanish sequence es que ‘is+that’ as a discourse particle with
justificative and even purely exclamatory functions. The diachronic evolution shows an
increasing degree of grammaticalization and (inter)subjectification. In a first stage, an
equative copulative sentence (e.g. (lo que quiero decir) es que… ‘(what I want to say) is
that…’, (la razón) es que… ‘(the reason) is that…’ is reinterpreted as a construction
that, in the opinion of the speaker, justifies what has just been said (Juan habla francés
muy bien. Es que su madre es francesa ‘Juan speaks French very well. The reason is
that his mother is French’). In a second stage in this evolution, the construction is also
used to offer a reason against what the interlocutor has expressed or may be thinking
(―¿Me ayudas a preparar la cena? ―Es que he quedado con los amigos ‘Can you
help me cook dinner? ‘The thing is, I am going out with my friends’). In a final stage, es
que acquires more complex discourse functions that may be described as expressive
(―¡A ese tío es que no le aguanto! Es que… es que no puedo con él ‘That guy, well, I
can’t deal with him. The thing is, I just can’t stand him’). We argue that the diachronic
process has involved first the appearance of non-coindexed pro as subject of the copula
es ‘is’ and, at a later stage, deletion of the empty pronoun and syntactic restructuring.
We also consider parallel developments in Catalan and Portuguese, as well as the
borrowing of the particle eske in colloquial Basque.
***
Epistemic futures and aspect: a cross-linguistic perspective
María Luisa Rivero (University of Ottawa)
In this paper, I examine in detail some unrelated languages to explore formal
grammar conditions that allow morphologies traditionally called ‘future’ to display both
(a) epistemic readings without future orientation (Eng. Susan will be sleeping right
now), and (b) future-oriented readings (Eng. Susan will sleep tomorrow). I root my
proposals on two hypotheses following (Rivero & Arregui 2017, 2018) and references
13Book of Abstracts
cited therein. One, in the examined languages, morpho-syntactically diverse future
forms systematically encode a modal category FUT that fails to impose temporal
restrictions. Whether embodied in a second position clitic, an auxiliary, an invariable
particle, or a verb inflection, FUT lacks intrinsic forward-shifting semantics, so can be
dubbed ‘futureless’. Two, temporal restrictions originate in aspectual or modal
functional categories that, while morpho-syntactically diverse, are nevertheless
semantically and syntactically embedded under modal FUT.
Two generalizations arise from the different syntax and morphologies of futures of
Bulgarian and Slovenian in South Slavic, Turkish and Azeri in Turkic, Hindi-Urdu in
Indo-Aryan, and Spanish in Romance. Namely, epistemic readings without future
orientation are possible when FUT takes complements that are basic or compositionally
derived states, most notably imperfectives, progressives, and perfects. By contrast, those
readings are blocked when FUT takes as complements basic or compositionality derived
eventives, most notably perfectives.
To illustrate, the Slovenian future form is a second position clitic auxiliary inflected
for person and number, and takes as complement a participle inflected for gender and
number, both bolded in (1a-b):
The Slovenian future auxiliary bo allows for a present epistemic reading when the
participle displays imperfective morphology: spala in (1a). With perfective morphology
on the participle (za.spala in (1b)), however, the reading is necessarily prospective; thus
(1b) is felicitous in a context where Tatiana is still awake at speech time (Rivero &
Sheppard 2016 for discussion, additional data, and references). It can then be assumed
that FUT imposes no temporal restrictions in Slovenian. Prefix za - is a representative
of Perfective Viewpoint Aspect as in (1b'); when under the scope of FUT, PERF
functions as a forward-shifting category. By contrast, the imperfective operator in (1a')
allows FUT to be anchored in the present. Slovenian is not that different from English
after all, and I will maintain similar conclusions when I examine the morphology and
syntax of Bulgarian, Turkish, and Hindi futures, etc.
14International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
References
Rivero, M. L. & Arregui, A. (2017). Futures without future: a cross-linguistic
perspective. Paper read at the 27th Colloquium of Generative Grammar.
Rivero, M. L. & Arregui, A. (2018). Unconditional readings and the simple conditional
tense in Spanish. Probus, 30(2), 305-337.
Rivero, M. L. & Sheppard, M. M. (2016). The Slovenian future auxiliary biti as a
tenseless gradable evidential modal. In F. L. Marušič & R. Žaucer (Eds.), Formal
Studies in Slovenian Syntax (pp. 253-281). John Benjamins.
***
Future and mirativity once again: The Spanish construction No irfut. a + infinitive
Susana Rodríguez Rosique (Universidad de Alicante)
This presentation deals with the construction No irfut a + infinitive in Spanish, as is
shown in (1):
(1) Consuelo abre el bolso, y saca un billetero.
–No irás a darme dinero –dice Sandra.
(RAE, CORPES XXI).
At first sight, this construction is integrated by two futures: on the one hand, the
periphrastic future ir a + infinitive; and, on the other, the synthetic future in which the
auxiliary of the periphrasis occurs. However, neither of them expresses future time
anymore. The construction is rather interpreted as the expression of the speaker’s
surprise towards a contextually inferable information. This interpretation is contributed
by three components.
Firstly, the special intonation exhibited by the structure resembles an exclamative
question (Alonso 1999). In turn, the constant presence of the external negation (Horn
[1980] 2001, Sánchez López 1999) invokes the opposite proposition:
(2) No irás a darme dinero > You are giving me money.
Secondly, the meaning of surprise is due to the occurrence of the synthetic future in
a particular discursive situation. As the recent literature claims, the synthetic future in
Romance languages is not only related to evidentiality (Squartini 2008; Escandell
2014), but also to mirativity (Rivero 2014; Rodríguez Rosique 2015; Squartini 2018).
The conception of this verbal form as a deictic instruction of ‘distance forward’ that can
15Book of Abstracts
be projected over different levels of meaning (Rodríguez Rosique 2019) seems relevant
here. When the information occurring in future has been previously activated –as in
these cases, which contains inferable material (Dryer 1996)–, the ‘distance forward’
instruction is projected over the utterance: the speaker distances himself towards a piece
of information showing that this does not form part of his integrated picture about the
world (DeLancey 1997).
(3) No irás a darme dinero > I can´t believe that you are giving me money.
Finally, the periphrasis ir a + infinitive does not necessarily convey here a coming
situation. If this can be the case in (1), it is not so evident in (4) and (5) below:
(4) –Ana me lo ha contado.
–Es un embuste -exclamó Mario.
–No irás a negar tu responsabilidad.
(RAE, CORPES XXI)
(5) –Afro... afrodisíaco –repitió Lorena–. A lo mejor lo es de verdad. Igual es eso lo que hace
que los chicos...
–Venga, Lorena, no irás a creer que con un simple frasquito rojo en forma de quinqué puedes
conseguir al chico que quieras.
(RAE, CORPES XXI)
Beyond the analysis of the construction no irfut a + infinite, from a more general
perspective this presentation vindicates the role of a particular type of utterance in a
specific informational situation for the appearance of the mirative future in Spanish.
Furthermore, it explores the productivity of certain tempo-spatial based cognitive
templates to project over different levels of meaning and to play different
communicative functions.
***
Condicionalidad y modo verbal en construcciones fraseológicas: estudio de casos
en español y catalán
Vicent Salvador (Universitat Jaume I)
Conditional constructions establish a relationship between two semantic
representations that is situated halfway causality and concessiveness. Causation
corresponds to the actual motivation of an effect, while concessiveness can be
understood mainly as an inefficient causality. In theory, conditionality refers to the field
16International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
of logical implication, but it materializes in languages as a series of diverse
pragmasemantic functions: making hypotheses about the future in possible worlds,
metadiscursively modalizing sentences, pragmatically mitigating the cost of orders and
advices through formulas of courtesy, topicalizing a part of the two-members structure,
etc.
The mode of the verb plays a relevant role in most of these cases, especially in
determining whether factual, hypothetical or counterfactual values, among other factors.
Here will be studied different relationships between some Spanish phraseological units
(idioms, proverbs, conventional sayings...) and the various modalities of conditionality,
by means of analyzing some frequent uses in Spanish.
As for the proverbs, they frequently make future predictions (for example those of a
meteorological nature) or set themselves the task of advising in the moral or practical
order through prescriptive statements that may have a pragmatic cost for the speaker. As
for the phrases or idioms that contain conditional elements, whether they are fixed as
structures or in the process of grammaticalization, these units act as connectors or other
types of discourse markers. In this way they contribute to establishing and making
recognizable certain characteristic grammatical constructions of Spanish.
Other times, finally, they are autonomous expressions that constitute conversational
routines in the current language and that have acquired a certain degree of
conventionalization.
***
Grados de abstracción e información compartida
Elena Sánchez-López (Universitat d’Alacant)
The usage-based approach has changed our notion of language. Real language
samples have become the object of observation, drawing the focus from an abstract
language to a more concrete one. A silver thread linking pragmatics and semantics has
emerged, connecting thus the study of (referential) meaning in Discourse or
Conversation Analysis to (conceptual) meaning in Cognitive Semantics. At the
midpoint between the two poles, an idiomatic, prototypical meaning, conveying the
generalized invited inferences or generalized implicatures, can be pointed out. This
acknowledgment pictures language as an interplay of gradual abstractions.
17Book of Abstracts
This abstraction scale influences not only meaning, but all dimensions of language
and human communication: form, meaning, linguistic and nonlinguistic context. It
ranges from a concrete statement (its form, the conveyed meaning, the surrounding
words and the communication situation) to its abstract representation (a construction, a
conceptual meaning, its combinatory possibilities and an Idealized Cognitive Model).
To enlighten the relation between the two levels of abstraction, it is appropriate to
postulate a medium one, i.e., a generalized statement involving a meso-construction
with a prototypical meaning, showing the most frequent combinatory and a prototypical
communication situation. This medium level of abstraction is essential to account for
language change and to compare different languages.
In our contribution, we will use a translated corpus (German > Spanish) to highlight
the differences of the information (knowledge) conveyed by the verbs in the two
languages. We will start from concrete examples to make generalizations and reach the
medium level of abstraction.
***
Pragmatic resolutions of temporal and aspectual semantic mismatches
Louis de Saussure (Université de Neuchâtel)
It’s a well-established fact that grammatical aspect imposes a modulation of the
conceptual-lexical aspect of the VP when these properties are conflicting. It’s also
known that aspectual and temporal adverbial forms impose not only a modulation of
lexical aspect but also a change in grammatical aspect in case of mismatches. Aspectual
and temporal mismatches seem thus to be resolved according to general principles
dealing with the prevalence of grammatical information over conceptual information,
and of that of more explicit elements over less explicit ones.
This explains lexical aspectual change or specification in linguistic contexts where
tense or adverbs impose a specific reading, as in (1), (2) and (3):
(1) Mary was reaching the summit [prog + achievement > activity / imperf. paradox]
(2) Marie a lu Le quatuor d’Alexandrie pendant un mois [perf. + atelic adv > atelic]
Marie read-ComposedPast The Alexandria Quartet for a month.
(3) J’ai bientôt fini [past + future adv. > future temporal reference]
18International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
At the same time, the interpretation of an utterance, regardless of the linguistic
context, may also lead to accommodate either temporal reference or other features such
as realis.
In a number of cases, however, the modulation occurs only to the price of a slight
strangeness, as in (4), or does not occur successfully at all, as in (5) and (6):
(4) (?) I’m loving it.
(5) # I’m knowing it
(6) # Marie a réparé l’ordinateur pendant vingt minutes
Marie repair-ComposedPast the computer during twenty minutes
In this talk, I will review a number of such cases and suggest that the intervention of
pragmatics is deeper than ‘simply’ to act as a contextual mismatch resolution device;
the meanings conveyed when accommodation occurs is richer, more subtle, than would
have achieved a literal wording.
***
The Role of Context in Imperative Form Choice
Scott Schwenter (The Ohio State University)
Typically when languages have more than one dedicated imperative, the distinct
forms correspond to different person/number combinations. But what happens when
there is variation between two forms for the same person/number combination, e.g. 2nd
person singular? This talk looks at two languages, Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and
Argentine Spanish (AS), which illustrate this situation. While AS has this option only in
negative imperatives, where vos and tú form imperatives alternate (cf. Johnson 2013,
2016), BP has this option in both affirmative and negative contexts, where the historical
imperative tu form for 2SG alternates with the 3SG present subjunctive form (cf.
Lamberti & Schwenter 2019). Through a combination of methodologies, including the
analysis of naturally-occurring examples and the results of experimental surveys, I show
that the variation between the two forms can be accounted for in terms of the semantic-
pragmatic notion of presumed settledness (Hoff & Schwenter in press), i.e. speaker
confidence about how the future will unfold, and can be operationalized in terms of
contextual characteristics such as linguistic markers of certainty, temporal immediacy,
and temporal specificity. More broadly, I suggest that these characteristics are relevant
19Book of Abstracts
to accounting for contrasts between imperative forms across languages such as those
with "delayed/deferred imperatives" (Aikhenvald 2014) and to the cross-linguistic
observation that prohibitives tend to be more irrealis than imperatives (van der Auwera
& Devos 2012).
***
El modelo de análisis vectorial y la plurifuncionalidad modotemporal en el sistema
verbal español
Alexandre Veiga (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
The geometric concept of vector (an oriented line segment) was applied to the
analysis of verbal systems ―particularly to the analysis of the Spanish verb― by
William Bull (1960) as a symbolization of the temporal relationships of anteriority,
simultaneity and posteriority, recognizable in the grammatical meaning expressed by
the forms that traditionally received the name of tenses. The subsequent research by
Guillermo Rojo (since Rojo 1974) re-employed the concept by re-establishing the basis
of a temporal analysis ―with precedents in Andrés Bello (1841, 1847)―, which allows
to represent the temporal contents expressed by verbal forms as sets of orientations
directly or indirectly focused from a central point ―or deictic center― of temporal
relations.
Since Bello’s work, the development of these analyses ran parallel to the
systematization of at least two generic types of uses shown by certain verbal forms: (a)
those uses in which the transmission of no modal content other than those related to
indicative/subjunctive distinction is appreciated and (b) those in which some other
marked modal value is added, in principle related to the grammatical concepts of
unreality or uncertainty.
The detailed analysis of the theoretically infinite possibilities of vector chaining in
the meaning of Spanish verbal forms allows us to evaluate different proposals for
grammatical analysis; in particular, those that use the defense of the notion of aspect or
some other new categories to explain differences in meaning that may support a
temporary-based explanation. On the other hand, the systematic study of the
correspondences between the grammatical uses that so many authors have presented as
the "main" ones and those that certain forms admit by simultaneously varying their
20International Conference Verb and Context (13-14 April 2021)
temporal and modal values requires taking into account a certain degree of complexity
in the functioning of the verbal mode in Spanish―and other languages―, as well as the
identification of multifunctionality facts. These multifunctionality facts can be
understood as the possible common expression of two or more combinations of doubly
opposable modal + temporal contents with functional value in the structure of the
system.
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