Re: RT list: RT and grammaticalization (Forwarded message from Louis de Saussure)

Dear Steve, dear all,

This is to let you know that we (in particular Cécile Barbet) are
currently trying to show on very concrete cases that relevance and
less-effort principles provides a good explanative ground for the
diachronic incorporation of explicature-type meanings starting from
implicature-type meanings in expressions bearing a procedural
meaning. We of course much use Steve's work on the topic. We'll send
some material and work in progress to Steve and anyone interested.
The particular cases that are studied are the emergence of epistemic
meanings for French devoir and pouvoir as well as of unexpected
'postmodal' meanings for pouvoir in particular (concessives or
sporadic). Please note that there is a paper (still in French) on
that topic, referring to RT, by Walter De Mulder, who explains the
grammaticalization of the future-auxiliary-aller from the mouvement
meaning of that verb.

With best regards,

Louis

References:

- Barbet C. (to appear), "Le verbe modal devoir en français médiéval
et contemporain : hypothèses pragmatiques sur le ch= angement
sémantique" in S. Prevost & al. (eds), Diachro IV, Berne - New York:
Lang.

- Barbet C. & Saussure L. de (to appear), "Sporadic aspect as a
pragmatic enrichment of dynamic root modality", Cahiers Chronos.
(draft available).

- Barbet C. & Saussure L. de. "Hypothèses pragmatiques sur le
changement sémantique". Presentation at the 5th colloque de
sémantique et pragmatique, april 2009, Gabes, Tunisia. Paper in
progress.

- De Mulder, W. (2008). "Grammaticalisation, métonymie et
pertinence", Durand J. Habert B., Laks B. (éds.) Congrès Mondial de
Linguistique Française CMLF=E2=80=9908, Paris.
Received on Mon Aug 10 21:26:29 2009