The fast case: Constructionalization of a Swedish concessive. Issue 2 (16th October 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Andersson, Peter; Andersen, Gisle; Hardt, Daniel
• Is Part Of: Nordic journal of linguistics. Volume 37:Issue 2(2014:May)
• Page Start: 141
• Page End: 167
• Publication Date: 2014-10-16
• Subjects: 410.5
• DOI: 10.1017/S033258651400016X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0332-5865

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="normal"> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>The development of grammatical markers has been described from several theoretical perspectives over the last decade: Grammaticalization Theory (Hopper & Traugott 2003, Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991), the Minimalist Program (Roberts & Roussou 2003, van Gelderen 2004), and Lexical-Functional Grammar (Vincent 2001), see also the overview in (Börjars & Vincent 2010). It has recently been addressed in Construction Grammar, where it is argued that a shift towards a constructional perspective on change may yield new insights into the workings of grammaticalization (Bergs & Diewald 2008, Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013, Traugott & Trousdale 2013). This paper should be taken as a contribution to a constructional view on grammaticalization. It is about the rise of the concessive subordinator <italic>fast</italic>(<italic>än</italic>) in the history of Swedish occurring in a construction or clause type called <sc>universal concessive conditional</sc> (Haspelmath & Köning 1998), in Swedish <sc>generaliserande bisats</sc> (SAG 1999). The Swedish <italic>fast</italic>, etymologically (and still productively) as an adjective in the meaning 'steady', 'robust' is used as an intensifier, 'very', 'much', in early Modern Swedish, eventually established as a concessive marker 'even if', 'although' in the 18th century. The conventionalization of a concessive inference is highly interesting and may be traced back to specific constructions in the 16th and 17th centuries. On the basis of an extensive corpus study, I analyze the critical contexts and discuss the development as constructional change rather than lexical change, arguing that a remapping between form and function takes place in concessive conditional constructions due to processes of inferencing and mismatch.</p> </abstract>