Abstract
This paper investigates a semantic change from ‘bring’ to ‘give’, and the language-specific factors that determine when it may happen. Drawing on a corpus of blogs and an acceptability judgment experiment, we demonstrate an ongoing change in the meaning of the Hebrew verb hevi, usually glossed as ‘bring’: older speakers are more likely to use hevi for unambiguous bring events, whereas younger speakers are more likely to use it in contexts also compatible with give events, although not in the full range of ‘give’ contexts. We argue that this change is facilitated by the specific discourse profile associated with the verb hevi: (1) frequent uses of hevi in the Goal-theme construction, the Hebrew functional equivalent of the English double object construction, creating a “bridging context” for semantic change (2) frequent uses of hevi in which there is no real-world motion, facilitating the bleaching of the ‘agent motion’ component. We then examine the English verb bring, which is not undergoing a similar change, and demonstrate that it has a different discourse profile (namely, far fewer double object constructions and no-motion uses). Thus, while a ‘bring’>‘give’ change is well-motivated and potentially possible, the factors enabling it to actually happen are determined by the predominant discourse pattern characteristic of the verb.
Acknowledgements
Mira Ariel gratefully acknowledges the support from the Israel Science Foundation grant no. 431/15. Scott Spicer gratefully acknowledges the support of the Northwestern University Undergraduate Research Grant. The authors would like to thank Tal Linzen for granting us access to his Israblog corpus and providing us with the data set. Finally, we wish to thank the anonymous reviewers at Folia Linguistica for providing much insightful feedback on this paper.
References
Ariel, Mira. 2008. Pragmatics and grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511791314Search in Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira, Elitzur Dattner, John W. Du Bois & Tal Linzen. 2015. Pronominal datives: The royal road to argument status. Studies in Language 39. 257–321.10.1075/sl.39.2.01ariSearch in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2001. Phonology and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511612886Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L., Revere D. Perkins & William Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Croft, William A. 2003. Lexical rules vs. constructions: A false dichotomy. In Hubert Cuyckens, Thomas Berg, René Dirven & Klaus-Uwe Panther (eds.), Motivation in language, 49–68. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.243.07croSearch in Google Scholar
Dattner, Elitzur. 2015a. Enabling and allowing in Hebrew: A Usage-Based Construction Grammar account. In Brian Nolan, Gudrun Rawoens & Elke Diedrichsen (eds.), Causation, permission, and transfer, 271–293. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.167.10datSearch in Google Scholar
Dattner, Elitzur. 2015b. Mapping the Hebrew dative constructions. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Du Bois, John W. & Mira Ariel. 2014. Give is not a given. Paper presented at Syntax of the World’s Languages, Workshop on ditransitives, University of Pavia.Search in Google Scholar
Eckardt, Regine. 2009. APO: Avoid Pragmatic Overload. In Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Jacqueline Visconti (eds.), Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics, 21–41. Bingley: Emerald.10.1163/9789004253216_003Search in Google Scholar
Eckardt, Regine. 2011a. Grammaticalization and semantic change. In Heiko Narrog & Bernd Heine (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization, 389–400. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199586783.013.0031Search in Google Scholar
Eckardt, Regine. 2011b. Semantic reanalysis and language change. Language and Linguistic Compass 5. 33–46.10.1111/j.1749-818X.2010.00260.xSearch in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Grossman, Eitan & Stéphane Polis. 2014. On the pragmatics of subjectification: The grammaticalization of verbless allative futures (with a case study in Ancient Egyptian). Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 46. 1–40.10.1080/03740463.2014.956007Search in Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 2002. On the role of context in grammaticalization. In Ilse Wischer & Gabriele Diewald (eds.), New reflections on grammaticalization, 83–102. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.49.08heiSearch in Google Scholar
Hilpert, Martin. 2014. Construction grammar and its application to English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2004. Lexicalization and grammaticalization: Opposite or orthogonal? In Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Björn Wiemer (eds.), What makes grammaticalization? A look from its fringes and its components, 21–44. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110197440Search in Google Scholar
Kuzar, Ron. 1992. Hocaat hevi mipney natan ba-lašon ha-meduberet [Replacement of natan by hevi in colloquial Hebrew]. Leshonenu LaAm 43. 103–106.Search in Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Landau, Idan 1994. Dative shift and extended VP-shells. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University MA thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 2009. Constructions and constructional meaning. In Vyvyan Evans & Stéphanie Pourcel (eds.), New directions in cognitive linguistics, 225–267. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/hcp.24.17lanSearch in Google Scholar
Linzen, Tal. 2009. Corpus of blog postings collected from the Israblog website. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University.Search in Google Scholar
Perek, Florent. 2015. Argument structure in usage-based construction grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cal.17Search in Google Scholar
Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Beth Levin. 2008. The English dative alternation: The case for verb sensitivity. Journal of Linguistics 44. 129–167.10.1017/S0022226707004975Search in Google Scholar
Reinöhl, Uta & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 2017. ‘Renewal’: A figure of speech or a process sui generis? Language 93. 381–413.10.1353/lan.2017.0018Search in Google Scholar
Rosemeyer, Malte & Eitan Grossman. 2017. The road to auxiliariness revisited: The grammaticalization of FINISH anteriors in Spanish. Diachronica 34. 516–558.10.1075/dia.16024.rosSearch in Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2003. Constructions in grammaticalizations. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 624–647. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470756393.ch20Search in Google Scholar
Trommer, Pnina, Avi Gvura & Rama Manor. 2015. The verbs of motion “ba” (come) and “hevi” (bring) in dictionaries of contemporary Hebrew. Journal of Literature and Art Studies 5. 355–367.10.17265/2159-5836/2015.05.007Search in Google Scholar
von Waldenfels, Ruprecht. 2012. The grammaticalization of ‘give’ + infinitive: A comparative study of Russian, Polish, and Czech. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110293777Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
