Mikhail Kissine, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Grammaticalization of illocutionary verbs: two directions of shift
Some of the verbs that refer to speech acts [SAVs] have a non-illocutionary use. Previous studies addressed the non-illocutionary uses of commissive SAVs only – threaten, refuse and promise –, and gave them an analysis in terms of subjectification (Traugott 1997; Verhagen). The non-illocutionary uses of directive and assertive verbs have been ignored. However, the non-illocutionary uses of such verbs are particularly interesting because they present to directions of semantic shift, illustrated below, that challenge previous analyses:
(1) This task requires attention.
(2) This book commands attention.
(3) These impressive ruins suggest Roman’s continued presence in the South of France.
(4) Woman-centred feminism asserts the historical and contemporary ubiquity of lesbians.
The example in (1) describes a necessary condition for whose fulfilment the existence of the referent of the syntactic object is needed. Importantly, the causal origin of the needed attention is unconstrained: a naturally attentive person would satisfy the condition. The example in (2), by contrast, expresses the existence of a causal reason to be attentive: the existence of the book is a good reason that can (and should) trigger our attention. I shall argue that the second example only may be explained in terms of subjectification: the existence of a reason to act is inferred from speaker’s beliefs about the situation rather than from a more objective knowledge about verbal interaction, as in (5).
(5) Mary requires John to apologise.
As for the following pair of examples, while in (3) the referent of the object clause is presented as the cause of the subject, and hence a natural sing of it, in (4), it is the subject that is the cause of the object. This latter pattern only may be explained by a process of subjectification which may run as follows. Successful assertions tend to generate an expectation that the asserted fact is true or to confirm that it is true, expectation that generalises to subjects whose non-sentient referent are taken to make true the state of affairs referred to by the object.
I shall suggest that the cases in (1) and (3) must be treated as metaphorical projections. Elaborating on Searle’s (Searle 1983) theory of meaning, I shall argue directives speech acts are constituted by representations of desires, and assertive speech acts by representations of beliefs. The interpretation of such representations constitutes the source domains in examples (1) and (3). There is no causal link between the desire and the state of affairs that satisfies it: if I want a piece of cake, it does not matter for the satisfaction of my desire whether you give me that piece of cake because you know I wanted it or because you are polite. It seems therefore reasonable to assume that the representations of desires are cognitively processed as natural pressures. The uses like (1) result from a metaphorical projection from the scenario of the audience of the directive speech act experiencing a pressure onto less specific situations where an Agonist (in the sense of Talmy 2000) undergoes pressure from an undetermined origin. As for representations of beliefs, there is experimental evidence that in normal circumstances they are processed as natural signs of states of affairs (Millikan: 104-125). For that reason, the scenario of accessing a natural meaning via a representation of belief, i.e., an assertive speech act, constitute a perfect source-domain for the metaphorical projection that links two states of affairs by a relation of natural meaning.
References
Millikan, R. G. (2004). Varieties of Meaning. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
Searle, J. R. (1983). Intentionality. An Essay in Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Talmy, L. (2000). Toward Cognitive Semantics. Volume I: Concept Structuring Systems. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
Traugott, E. C. (1997). "Subjectification and Epistemic Meaning: The Case of Promise and Threaten." Modality in Germanic Languages. Historical and Comparative Perspectives. T. Swan and O. J. Westvik, (eds.), Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter: 185-210
Verhagen, A. (1995). "Subjectification, Syntax, and Communication." Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: Linguistic Perspectives. D. Stein and S. Wright, (eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 103-128
Verhagen, A. (1996). "Sequential Conceptualization and Linear Order." Cognitive Linguistics in the Redwoods. The Expansion of a New Paradigm in Linguistics. E. H. Cassad, (ed.), Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter: 793-820
