24 Degrees of Grammaticalization across Languages
Béatrice Lamiroy and Walter De Mulder
1 Introduction
The central hypothesis of this paper is that an essential property of grammaticalization, viz. its
gradual character, 1 also applies within a genealogical family. Thus, several
grammaticalization processes may be more advanced in one language than in the other
languages of the same family. We will provide evidence for Romance, by comparing French
to two other Romance languages, Italian and Spanish. The cline goes like this:
(1)
French

Italian

Spanish
Various approaches have been proposed to account for grammaticalization
phenomena, i.e. the development from lexical to grammatical items, and from grammatical to
more grammatical forms. We will assume here, following Heine and Narrog (2010), that
grammaticalization results from the interaction between phonetic, morphosyntactic, semantic
and pragmatic factors, and that the following parameters can be used as mechanisms to
uncover instances of grammaticalization:
- extension, both to new contexts and to other speakers of the linguistic community;
- desemanticization;
- decategorialization, i.e. the loss of the typical morphosyntactic properties of lexical
items (or of less grammaticalized forms);
- phonetic reduction.
These parameters not only correspond to each of the above mentioned linguistic components,
but also reflect the diachronic order followed by a grammaticalization process. Phonetic
erosion thus represents the final stage of the process, and is not a sine qua non precondition
for grammaticalization to occur. Most of the phenomena we will deal with are characteristic
of grammaticalization which has already attained a fairly advanced stage in the process.2
As pointed out by Heine and Narrog (2010), the ultimate motivation behind any
grammaticalization process is successful communication. This entails the development of
simpler structures on the one hand (speaker’s economy) and of more “extravagant” structures
(hearer’s economy) on the other (Geurts 2000; Haspelmath 2000). In both cases, frequent
repetition by users is necessary for the propagation of the new form throughout the linguistic
community (Bybee et al. 1994:8; Krug 2001), a factor which is subsumed under the extension
mechanism in Heine and Narrog (2010).
Although Heine and Narrog (2010) do not consider obligatorification, one of
Lehmann’s (1995) parameters, as a central concept but rather as a predictable by-product of
decategorialization, we tend to believe that it plays an important role in grammaticalization,
along with paradigmatization 3, because the constitution of paradigms is in part what grammar
is about. We thus consider that a form speakers can freely choose according to their
communicative intentions is less grammaticalized than one for which their choice is limited in
1
The terminology differs according to the authors : grammaticalization is described as a continuum (Brinton
1988), as a chain (Heine and Kuteva 2002), as a cline (Hopper and Traugott 2003) or as a pathway (Bybee et al.
1994; Bisang 1996).
2
They correspond to stages III and IV of Heine (2002).
3
Obligatorification occurs when the choice of an item is “systematically constrained and its use largely
obligatory”, as opposed to the free “choice of items according to the communicative intentions” of the speaker
(Lehmann 1995 :164). “The process of paradigmatic integration or paradigmaticization leads to a leveling out of
the differences with which the members were equipped originally” (Lehmann 1995 : 135)
1
a systematic way. For this reason, for example, the French personal pronoun may be
considered more grammaticalized than its Spanish and Italian counterparts, since its
expression in French, the only non-pro-drop Romance language, is no longer optional. We
will come back to this point when we discuss the virtual disappearance of the “past simple”
and the decrease of the subjunctive in French.
A few remarks are in order here. First and foremost, the cline in (1) is not intended as
a tool to measure the distance between the three languages and the mother language, Latin.
Second, what we will show is a very robust tendency rather than an absolute principle. For
example, in most cases, Spanish will be shown to be the most conservative language. Yet
Spanish, just like Portuguese and French, but unlike Italian, developed a future auxiliary out
of the motion verb ir ‘go’:
(4)
Sp. Va
a llover.
go.3SG.IND.PRS to rain.INF.PRS
‘It is going to rain’.
Moreover, as is well known, a grammaticalization process may start without going all
the way, and sometimes language seems to evolve in the opposite direction, i.e. there are also
cases of degrammaticalization (Norde 2009). However, as cases of degrammaticalization do
not seem to amount to more than 10% of all grammatical evolutions (Heine and Narrog
2010), they do not seriously threaten the unidirectionality hypothesis of grammaticalization.
Likewise, there is significant evidence that clearly argues in favor of the hypothesis that, all in
all, French is more grammaticalized than the other Romance languages under study. A wellknown example is that of (late) Latin casa ‘house’, which grammaticalized into the French
preposition chez ‘at’, whereas both Spanish and Italian have maintained casa as a noun
meaning ‘house’. Another case in point is the Latin noun homo ‘man’, which in French (and
Occitan) grammaticalized into the indefinite pronoun on (e.g. Fr. On ne vit qu’une fois ‘You
live only once’): this happened in none of the other Romance languages. In addition, in
French, the same pronoun on was the source of a second grammaticalization process, so that it
now also functions as an equivalent of the first person plural pronoun nous (e.g. on part ‘we
are leaving’).
The idea that French, Italian and Spanish are grammaticalized to different degrees,
with French being more grammaticalized than Italian and Spanish, and Italian more than
Spanish (cf. (1)), will be illustrated here with data concerning central areas of the grammar:
auxiliaries, tense and mood, existential sentences and demonstratives. However, the same
tendency also holds for other areas, which we will not be able to go into here, such as word
order (Marchello-Nizia 2006a: 131; 2009), prepositions (Goyens et al. 2002, Lamiroy 2001),
etc.
2 Auxiliaries
Auxiliaries are defined as TAM verbs (Heine 1993), i.e. they express tense, aspect or mood,
as in (6):
(6)
Fr. Jean commence
Sp. Juan comienza
It. Gianni comincia
John begin.3SG.IND.PRS
‘John begins to eat.’
à
a
a
to
manger.
comer.
mangiare.
eat.INF.PRS
2
In all Romance languages, auxiliaries are the outcome of grammaticalization processes
(Lamiroy 1999, Squartini 1998); however, French displays less lexical variation among its
TAM verbs than Spanish and Italian do, so its paradigmatic variability is more constrained.
Spanish for example has at least six auxiliaries to express inchoative aspect, whereas French
has only two, commencer and se mettre:
(7)
Sp. Ana empezó
/ comenzó
a reir.
Ann begin.3SG.IND.PS / begin.3SG.IND.PS to laugh.INF.PRS
Ana se
metió 4 / se
puso
a reir.
Ann herself put.3SG.IND.PS / herself put.3SG.IND.PS to laugh.INF.PRS
Ana se
echó
a reir.
Ann herself throw.3SG.IND.PS to laugh.INF.PRS
Ana rompió
a
reir.
Ann break.3SG.IND.PS to
laugh.INF.PRS
‘Ann began to laugh.’
The class of Spanish 5 and, to a lesser extent, of Italian 6 TAM verbs is also larger because
certain iterative and habitual auxiliaries which did not survive in French are still in use in
these languages. Paradigmaticization is thus more advanced in French:
(8)
Sp. Vuelve
a llover.
go back.3SG.IND.PRS to rain.INF.PRS
It. ? Torna
a piovere.
go back.3SG.IND.PRS to rain.INF.PRS
‘It rains again.’
Sp. Solía
verla
cada
use.3SG.IND.IMPF see.INF.PRS=her.ACC.SG every
‘He used to see her every day.’
día.
day
With respect to progressive aspect, Spanish and Italian respectively use estar, stare ‘to
be’ and ir, andare ‘to go’ followed by the gerund:
(9a)
Sp.
It.
Está / va
diciendo
mentiras.
Sta
/ va
dicendo
be.3SG.IND.PRS / go.3SG.IND.PRS say.GER
‘He is lying.’
bugie.
lies
A similar construction used to exist in French, but gradually disappeared from the 17th century
on, only surviving in semi-idiomatic expressions such as
(9b)
Fr.
Le problème
the problem
va
croissant.
go.3SG.IND.PRS increase.GER
4
In constrast to the other Spanish inchoative verbs, meterse, echar(se) and romper only take a [+ hum] subject,
which means that their extension to all contexts is not completed, as one would expect from fully
grammaticalized auxiliaries: individual TAM verbs thus display different degrees of grammaticalization within
the same language as well.
5
These auxiliaries have again lexical variants, e.g. acostumbrar + infinitive is a synonym of soler.
6
Renzi and Salvi (1991: 521) mention the Italian auxiliary with habitual meaning solere but say it is archaic.
Note that soloir existed in old French (Tobler-Lommatzsch 1925-2002).
3
‘The problem is increasing’.
Several accounts have been proposed in the literature for the disappearance of the gerund with
progressive meaning in French, both external factors such as the criticism by normative
grammarians, who consider it an Italianism, and internal factors, such as the competition with
the imperfect, which can also express progressive meaning (Schoesler 2006). In our view, the
emergence of the “extravagant” infinitival structure être en train de and its gradual extension
in French, which eventually made the progressive structure with gerund disappear, may be
partly7 due to the fact that the new structure enters the same paradigm as all the other TAM
verbs, i.e. a verb necessarily followed by an infinitive. The infinitival structure thus has a
“magnetic” effect, attracting all TAM verbs into a similar formal pattern.8 Whereas être en
train de + infinitive only took [+hum] subjects and was followed by agentive verbs at first, its
distribution progressively extended to all kinds of contexts (Mortier 2007).
In sum, French TAM verbs not only are more limited than their Spanish and Italian
counterparts, the class of auxiliaries is also more homogeneous since they all display the same
syntactic property, that of exclusively taking infinitival complements. Therefore
paradigmaticization is more advanced in French than in the other languages.
3 The « past simple »
In contemporary spoken French, the passé simple with aoristic meaning has disappeared and
has been replaced by the present perfect (Grevisse-Goosse 2007: 882). In written and spoken
Spanish in contrast, the equivalent tense, viz pretérito indefinido, is not only common but is
obligatory to indicate aoristic meaning 9 and in Italian, the passato remoto, still in use in the
South, is disappearing in the North of the country: 10
(10)
a. Fr. ?* Hier
il
yesterday he
It. ? Ieri
Sp.
Ayer
yesterday
vint.
come.3SG.IND.PS
venne.
vino.
come.3SG.IND.PS
b. Fr.
Hier
il est venu.
yesterday he come.3SG.IND.PRF
It.
Ieri
è venuto.
Sp. ?* Ayer
ha venido.
yesterday come.3SG.IND.PRF
‘He came yesterday.’
The Romance present perfect, as is well known, is the result of a grammaticalization process
of a resultative construction with the full verb habere + [past participle of a transitive verb +
direct object], which was reanalyzed as [habere + past participle] + direct object, before
extending to intransitive verbs. In a seminal paper on the evolution of the Vulgar Latin
periphrastic perfect, Harris (1982) convincingly shows that its development consists of four
7
The official criticism by normative grammarians may of course have accelerated the spreading of the new
construction.
8
Note that the future auxiliary aller ‘go’ followed by the infinitive emerges around the same time, during the
17th century (Detges 1999).
9
This judgement holds for peninsular Spanish. In certain areas of South America, the present perfect is
sometimes used with aoristic meaning (Scott Schwenter: p.c.).
10
Interestingly, the simple past also survived longer in the South of France than in the North (Grevisse-Goosse
2007: 882).
4
stages, each of which can still be found in some Romance languages or dialects. Whereas the
original value of the construction (stage I) is merely aspectual, expressing resultative meaning
(which is still the case in Sicilian), in Stage II, the perfect acquires a temporal value,
indicating past events whose result lasts until the moment of speech (like in modern
Portuguese). In stage III, it marks past events with relevance for the moment of speech (like in
modern Spanish) and finally, in Stage IV, the perfect is used to encode narrative events, i.e. it
has become a marker of aoristic value, thus replacing the “past simple”. Although all four
stages persist in French, of the three languages under analysis here, only French and northern
variants of Italian have reached the last stage.
Interestingly, Detges (1999, 2000; 2006) argues that the evolution from stage I to IV
should be accounted for in pragmatic terms, i.e. by subjectification.11 While the resultative
aspectual value is the starting point of the evolution of the Romance perfect (as is the case in
many languages, cf. Heine and Kuteva 2006:140-182), the present perfect was progressively
used to mark past events with current relevance. As pointed out by Detges, there is a
metonymic implicature between current knowledge and the previous experience by which it
was brought about, which can be exploited for pragmatic reasons: by choosing the present
perfect, a speaker coding himself as subject of this construction makes a strong commitment
with respect to the current consequences of previous events. In other words, the function of
the present perfect is to emphasize the subject’s involvement in the state of affairs expressed
by the verb. This metonymic implicature was conventionalized as part of the structure’s
temporal meaning. Finally, in stage IV, which French attained in the 18th century, the
construction came to refer to the past event itself without necessarily implying its impact at
the moment of speech. It is therefore the actual equivalent of what the simple past used to be.
Detges (2006: 69) points out that the shift from stage I to II took place much later in Spanish
than in French, which probably explains why Spanish still is at stage III and has not reached
stage IV, as French has. The above mentioned ongoing evolution in the North of Italy
suggests that the Italian perfect might be undergoing a similar grammaticalization process as
the one that affected French in the 18th century.
4 Existential sentences
Whereas French and Spanish existential sentences take the form of an impersonal
construction with the locative clitic y and avoir / haber respectively (il y a and hay), Italian
uses essere in combination with the locative ci. Essere can occur in 3d person singular or
plural, c’è or ci sono:
(11)
Fr. Il y
a
beaucoup de monde ici.
it there have.3SG.IND.PRS a lot
of people here
It. C’ è
molta gente quì.
there be.3SG.IND.PRS much people here
Sp. Hay
mucha gente aquí.
have.3SG.IND.PRS much people here
‘There are a lot of people here.’
Although Fr. il y a, It. c’è and Sp. hay are all three grammaticalized structures which
originated either as an expression of possession (avoir / haber) or of existence (essere)
combined with a now totally bleached locative pronoun y / ci, Meulleman (in press: 231 ff.)
argues that French il y a is far more grammaticalized than its Spanish and Italian counterparts.
11
For an account of the English perfect also based on the notion of subjectification, see Carey (1995).
5
With respect to the four above mentioned parameters of grammaticalization processes, French
il y a shows the following results. As far as extension is concerned, three important facts can
be pointed out. First, French il y a came to be used as an obligatory tool to restrict a subject in
focus, e.g.
(12) Fr. Il n’y
a
que toi qui sais
it
there
have.3SG.IND.PRS
only you who
know.2SG.IND.PRS
où
est
la clé.
where be.3SG.IND.PRS
the
key
‘Only you know where the key is.’
The Spanish and Italian counterparts here would use the adverb sólo / solo 12
respectively, since hay and c’è do not have a similar function. Secondly, with respect to the
following NP, in existential sentences whose main discursive function is to introduce a
(hearer-)new referent, the existential N is typically introduced by an indefinite determiner.
Whereas this holds as a general rule for the Spanish examples in Meulleman’s corpus, French
and Italian allow all kinds of determiners, even proper names (Meulleman, in press: 245), e.g.
(13)
Fr. Ainsi à Roncevaux il y
a
Roland,
son cor
et
thus in Roncevaux it there have.3SG.IND.PRS Roland, his horn and
son épée, ça fait
trois.
his sword, that make.3SG.IND.PRS three.
‘Thus in Roncevaux there is Roland, his horn and his sword, that makes
three.’
(Le Monde, 28/02/1994)
It.
Al fianco del
regista
ci sono
Sienna Miller (…), il
next to the director there be.3PL.PRES.IND Sienna Miller (…), the
grande Jeremy Irons
great Jeremy Irons, …
‘Next to the director there is Sienna Miller, the great Jeremy Irons, …’
(Corriere della sera, 04/09/2005)
It should be noted, however, as pointed out by Meulleman (in press: 248), that the extension
of the existential NP is more relevant for French than for Italian, since only the French
construction is really an impersonal structure, whereas the Italian c’è also may appear as a
plural and with a preposed subject, as in
It. Però
il
disagio
c’ è
e si sente lo stesso.
But the
discomfort there be.3SG.IND.PRS
‘But the discomfort is there and one feels it all the same.’
(Corriere della sera, 04/09/2005)
(14)
and …
12
French seul can also be used with restrictive meaning, but only in front of a full NP and its use is limited to
written French.
6
And finally, French il y a has become extremely common in sentence initial position of a biclausal structure in which a non-topic NP appears postverbally in the first clause (Lambrecht
1994: 169):
(15) a. Il y
a
des garçons qui sont partis.
it there have.3SG.IND.PRS
boys
who go.3PL.IND.PRF
‘Some boys left.’
b. Il y
a
ma mère qui est
à
l’hôpital.
it there have.3SG.IND.PRS my mother who be.3SG.IND.PRS at the hospital
‘My mother is in the hospital.’
At the same time, the above examples show that il y a is the most desemanticized of all three
existential structures, as it no longer has existential meaning in this case, but merely functions
as a discursive tool for thetic sentences. In cases like (15), in Spanish and Italian, subject
inversion would occur. In modern French, however, where subject inversion is highly
constrained, il y a now functions as a device to obtain the same discursive effect (Béguelin
2000). Interestingly, whereas Spanish hay is never used in this context, specialists of spoken
Italian (Aureli 2003 ; Fiorentino 1999) mention a non-standard use of a “weak relative” with
c’è that seems similar to the above indicated French structure, e.g.
(16) C’ è
un uomo che corre
sulla spiaggia.
there be.3SG.IND.PRS
a man who run.3SG.IND.PRS on-the beach
‘A man is running on the beach.’
French il y a is also the most decategorialized of the three structures, since, as we have
already mentioned, it no longer has the property of selecting indefinite NPs, which is a
characteristic of impersonal existential sentences. Furthermore, il y a is a case of
polygrammaticalization, since it also became a temporal preposition meaning ‘ago’. This is
neither the case for Sp. hay nor for It. c’è:
(17)
Paul est arrivé
il y
a
trois
semaines.
Paul arriver.3SG.IND.PRF it there have.3SG.IND.PRS three weeks
‘Paul arrived three weeks ago.’
Note finally that of the three existential structures, only the French one also shows
phonetic erosion, il y a being often reduced to “y a” pronounced as [ja]. This form even
occurs in written French, as the following press example testifies (Meulleman, in press: 235) :
(18)
Rassurez-vous,
y
a
un truc.
calm.2PL.IMP.PRS you, there have.3SG.IND.PRS a trick
‘Don’t worry, there is a trick.’
(Le Monde, 28/01/1994)
5 Mood
That the French subjunctive is more grammaticalized than its Italian and Spanish counterparts
was already pointed out by Harris (1978: 172), who considers the French subjunctive to be
mainly a marker of subordination, in contrast with the remaining Romance languages, where
mood alternation between the indicative and the subjunctive parallels a difference in meaning.
7
The crucial difference between the two modes is based on the speaker's commitment with
respect to a state of affairs in the case of the indicative and the avoidance of such a
commitment in the case of the subjunctive (Dreer 2007 : 24). Obviously it is not possible to
treat all uses of the subjunctive in the three languages in the space allotted here. We will
therefore only zoom in upon a certain number of significant facts.
First, although the French subjunctive obviously is still in use, there is no doubt that it
is much less frequent than it used to be (Buridant 2000: 337; Dreer 2007: 201 ff.; Lagerqvist
2009: 39). After verbs expressing hope or belief for example, the subjunctive could be used in
Old French, but this is no longer the case now:
(19)
OFr. Bien quident
ce ait fait
Tristan.
well think.3PL.IND.PRS this faire.3SG.SBJV.PST Tristan
(Dreer 2007 : 209)
Fr. Ils pensent que Tristan a fait
/
they think that Tristan faire.3SG.IND.PRF /
* ait fait
cela
faire.3SG.SBJV.PST that
‘They think Tristan did it.’
From the 17th century on, the indicative quickly spread as the normal mood after verbs
expressing belief in French, at least in affirmative constructions. In the other two languages,
verbs of belief still allow both moods, as exemplified by the Italian example in (20):
(20) a. Credo
che ora è
possibile
difendermi
believe.1SG.IND.PRS that now be.3SG.IND.PRS possible defend.INF.PRS=me
da tutte le calunnie.
from all the slander
‘I believe that I can protect myself against any gossip now.’
(Corriere della Sera, 31/7/1988, Wandruszka 2001: 434)
b. Multi credono
che la Borsa
abbia toccato
Many think.3PL.IND.PRS that the Stock Exchange touch.3SG.SBJV.PST
il suo tetto.
its
ceiling
‘Many think that the Stock Exchange has touched the roof.’
(Wandruszka 2001: 434)
In general, both in the independent and in the subordinate clause, 13 the subjunctive is much
less frequent in French than in contemporary Spanish and Italian, as shown by a large corpus
study on the subjunctive in Romance languages (Loengarov 2006: 343). 14
Second, even if the subjunctive in French like the Latin coniuntivus (Pinkster 1990)
can still signal non-factivity 15 , what has crucially changed is its status with respect to
This observation has been confirmed by the results of a small corpus study of Antonio Tabucchi’s novel
Sostiene Pereira and its French translation. The Italian text contains 233 cases of the Italian congiuntivo whereas
its French translation only contains 111 cases of the subjonctif. A similar study of a small Spanish corpus, Isabel
Allende’s novel De amor y de sombra and its French translation shows 434 forms in the subjuntivo in the
original text against 147 forms in the subjonctif in the French translation.
14
Adverbial clauses, object clauses and indirect questions are all subsumed under this term.
15
“Non-factivity” means that the situation expressed in a clause is not presented as a fact by the speaker and thus
is not asserted.
13
8
paradigmatic variability. Whereas speakers of Spanish (Ridruejo 2000: 3229) and Italian
(Brunet 2006: 162) often still have the choice between the two moods, according to their
intention to present the denoted situation as a fact or not, mood selection in French is largely
determined by lexical elements such as the valency of the main verb or a particular
conjunction, i.e. mood has undergone what Lehmann (1995) labeled obligatorification. Thus a
verb such as espérer, which allowed the subjunctive in former days to stress that the speaker
did not ascertain the chances of the event hoped for, only takes the indicative now. The
Spanish and Italian counterpart, viz. esperar and sperare allow both. Note that the phonetic
and morphological evolution of French also led to a much higher degree of syncretism
between verbal forms in the indicative and the subjunctive, so that the distinction between the
two modes is also formally more blurred in French than in the other languages.
Interestingly, Wandruszka (2001: 422) signals that in some regions of Italy and in
more informal popular language, the indicative is more frequently used than the subjunctive
after verbs of hope and belief. On the other hand, Loengarov (2006:195) argues that although
the subjunctive is often found after verbs of belief in Italian, in many cases it does not seem to
be clearly motivated by a semantic or discursive choice by the speaker. In other words, both
moods after verbs such as pensare or credere seem to occur without a semantic difference,
which could suggest that they are in an overlap stage (Heine 1993). Although of course more
research is needed here, this could signal an on-going evolution in Italian which parallels the
history of French, something we have already observed with respect to the tense system in §
3.
A final point we want to make concerns the so-called thematic use of the subjunctive.
In Latin, psych-verbs were followed by the indicative in the object clause (Pinkster 1990:
209), precisely because the situation indicated by the clause is presented as a fact:
(21) Sane
gaudeo
quod te interpellavi.
certainly be happy.1SG.IND.PRS that you interrupt.1SG.IND.PRF
‘I am certainly happy to have interrupted you.’
Although the indicative remains more frequent in the oldest stages of all three Romance
languages, the subjunctive after psych-verbs appeared in Late Latin and became the normal
mood in cases such as:
(22) Fr. Je regrette
qu’ il soit parti.
I be sorry.1SG.IND.PRS that he leave.3SG.SBJV.PST
It. Mi
dispiace
che sia partito.
me.DAT not-please.3SG.IND.PRS that leave.3SG.SBJV.PST
Sp. Siento
que se
haya ido.
be sorry.1SG.IND.PRS that 3SG.REFL. leave.3SG.SBJV.PST
‘I am sorry that he left.’
The preference for the subjunctive in these contexts obviously cannot be accounted for by the
non-factivity of the complement clause, since its content is presupposed. Its main function
rather is to signal syntactic and discursive subordination: whereas the state-of-affairs indicated
by the complement clause is thematic, the new information is expressed by the main clause.
So the Romance subjunctive developed a new function which it did not have in Latin, viz. that
of signaling the theme of the sentence. This non-etymological or non-harmonic (Bybee et al.
1994: 218 ff.) subjunctive now regularly appears in subject clauses in all three languages
(Gsell and Wandruszka 1996: 87). However, it is revealing in this respect that the thematic
subjunctive in subject clauses seems to have become the general rule in French: in a recent
9
corpus study (Lagerqvist 2009: 423), not a single case was found in the indicative. Loengarov
(2005) similarly underscores the extremely high frequency of the subjunctive after Fr. le fait
que ‘the fact that’. Although further research is needed here for Italian, it comes as no surprise
that in Spanish the indicative appears to be not at all rare in this case, especially in its SouthAmerican variants (Lope Blanch 1990: 181). In other words, the new thematic function of the
subjunctive seems to have attained a virtually complete extension in French, while this is not
the case in Spanish.
6 Demonstratives
Classical Latin had an elaborate system of demonstrative pronouns and adjectives which
contained, alongside the anaphoric is, three demonstratives that indicated the relation between
their referent and the participants to the speech event in a straightforward way:
(23)
Lat.
hic
iste
ille
meant ‘this near to me; close to the first person’
‘that near to you; close to the second person’
‘that of some other person; close to third person’
This system was completed by the identity markers ipse ‘self’ and idem ‘same’. It underwent
several changes from Vulgar Latin to the modern Romance languages; most importantly, the
original demonstratives weakened and had to be reinforced by ecce ‘behold’ or the equivalent
form accu. Both forms lost their independence and became prefixes. In Spanish, (accu+)iste,
(accu+)ipse and (accu+)ille evolved into (aqu)este, (aqu)ese and aquel respectively (Harris
1978: 71). These forms can be analyzed as part of a ‘person-oriented’ system, as is the case in
Latin, but also as part of a ‘distance-oriented’ system, as is illustrated by the two values of ese
(Da Milano 2007: 28):
(24)
a. Sp.
- este: close to the speaker
- ese: at a middle distance from the speaker or near the addressee
- aquel: far away
Of the reinforced forms, only aquel was maintained, probably because the corresponding
simple form el developed other uses, as a definite article and as a pronominal (Harris 1978:
71).
In Italian, the Vulgar Latin system underwent different evolutions in different regions. The
standard language developed three forms:
b. It.
- questo: close to the speaker (‘first-person oriented’)
- quello: away from the speaker
- codesto: away from the speaker, near the addressee
However, whereas the three forms are still commonly used in Spanish, in modern Italian,
codesto has become obsolete. While Italian is thus on the way to reducing its system to a
binary one, 16 Old French had already eliminated the demonstrative indicating the middle
distance and retained only cest (from ecce + istu(m)) and cel (from ecce+illu(m)).17 It had
several other demonstrative forms (for an overview, see Marchello-Nizia 1995: 126-127), but
16
The distinction between three degrees of distance has been maintained in the south of Italy, with forms such as
stu, ssu and ddu, deriving from istum, ipsum and illum respectively (Rohlfs 1966-69: § 494, Harris 1978:72).
17
The masculine singular forms of old French (cest and cel) and modern French (ce, celui-ci and celui-là) are
used here to represent paradigms which also contain the corresponding feminine and plural forms. For more
information, see Buridant (2000) and Grevisse-Goosse (2007).
10
these have been progressively eliminated, thus facilitating the creation of a more unified
paradigm. Cest and cel, the precursors of the modern forms, marked a difference in distance:
c. OFr. - cest: close to the speaker
- cel: farther away from the speaker
Moreover, both forms could be used either as a pronoun or as a determiner, as in Latin and in
modern Spanish and Italian. Despite its clear structure, the system of demonstratives
underwent a drastic change from Old French on (cf. Marchello-Nizia 1995; 2006b). The
resulting modern French system differs from Italian and Spanish in two respects:
(i) Demonstrative pronouns and determiners are expressed by different forms: ce is
mainly used as a determiner (it can be used as a neuter pronoun, but only in certain
contexts), whereas celui(-ci), celui(-là) and cela are used as pronouns. In this way,
French is the only one of the three languages under study that has created a formal
distinction corresponding to the grammatical difference between determiner and
pronoun.
(ii) The demonstrative forms ce and celui no longer express differences in distance by
themselves; therefore, already in Middle French, ici and là were added to express
these distinctions. Subsequently, both forms have weakened again and have been
transformed into the suffixes –ci and –là, e.g. ceci, cela, celui-ci, celui-là.18 Moreover,
they no longer systematically indicate distance-related oppositions: –là does not
necessarily imply that the referent is far away and functions as the unmarked form
with respect to –ci ; it refers to a generic space around the speaker and the hearer (Da
Milano 2007: 30).19 Thus, both the forms ce and celui and the linguistic items that are
called upon to restore the demonstrative function (ecce- and accu-) or to indicate the
deictic differences in distance (–ci and –là) have undergone coalescence and semantic
weakening.
The changes thus confirm the idea of different degrees of grammaticalization between the
three languages under study, French being more advanced with respect to the formation of
unified paradigms for demonstrative pronouns and determiners than, respectively, Italian and
Spanish (cf. the scale under (1) above). French can thus be said to be more grammaticalized
than the other two languages, because (i) it has created separate paradigms for demonstrative
determiners and pronouns, (ii) these demonstrative forms have undergone desemanticization
and erosion and (iii) both ce (as a determiner) and celui (which has to be followed by –ci or –
là or other complements, such as a relative phrase) have lost their autonomy.
7 Conclusions
In this chapter, we have provided evidence from central areas of the grammar of three
Romance languages that one of them, viz. French, has reached a further stage of
grammaticalization in these areas than Spanish and Italian. This raises several issues for
further research.
From an empirical point of view, it needs to be investigated what the relation is
between all the Romance languages, including those we have not taken into consideration,
18
Note once more that Italian seems to be evolving in the way French did: Sabatini (1985:159) points out that in
non-standard Italian the demonstrative pronouns questo and quello tend to be reinforced by quí ‘here’ and là
‘there’, being often replaced by questo qui and quello là.
19
In fact, it seems that nowadays là-bas is added to the word to mark greater distance (Da Milano 2007:30).
11
with respect to their degree of grammaticalization. More importantly, it must be verified
whether data similar to those described here are known from other language families.
Although facts have been pointed out that support the hypothesis for Romance in general
(Loengarov 2006; Marchello-Nizia 2006a: 111) and for a similar cline regarding Germanic
languages (Hüning et al. 2006; Mortelmans 2004; Van Haeringen 1956), much more
typological evidence would be needed to strengthen our hypothesis.
On a theoretical level, the question arises whether examples from one or two language
families are sufficient to raise the issue regarding different rates of grammaticalization in
general. If it turns out that a comparable situation holds for other language families, one
should wonder why this is so and which factors determine the rate of grammaticalization. We
believe that the explanation lies in the combination of internal and external factors (language
contact, frequency, the existence of structural patterns that can act as attractors (cf. § 2), etc,
which reinforce each other, but we have to leave this question as well for further research.
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