Evidentiality in German / Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM] Bd.228 (PDF)

Chapter 8 Diachronic corpus study of the four constructions (p. 229-230)


This chapter presents the results of our diachronic corpus research on infinitive constructions with werden, scheinen, drohen and versprechen. The constructions will be described in their chronology from OHG period onward using the theoretical concepts introduced in Chapter 5.

As we are dealing with verbs of (relatively) high frequency and high combinatorial potential, a full treatment of all diachronic ramifications is beyond the scope of this study. We will therefore focus on those periods and constructions that are most decisive for the development of the evidential marker in each verb. This means that, depending on the verb, particular diachronic periods as well as particular lexical and constructional variants are treated differently as to weight and explicitness of exposition depending on their relevance for the grammaticalization process under investigation.

For werden & infinitive, which is the oldest infinitive construction in the set, the development into an evidential marker is accomplished around 1800, i.e., the period from the 18th century onward will not be looked at in this chapter. As werden & infinitive can be taken to be an instance of “polygrammaticalization”, the status of its function as a future marker and its interrelation with the evidential function is discussed in some detail.

The construction scheinen & zu-infinitive, too, will be traced back to its ancestors in OHG to the 18th century, when – as we will show – it was already grammaticalized to a very high degree and functioned in a similar way as it does in PDG. However, as this is a new result of this study, in contrast to werden, a control study with corpus data from the 19th century was conducted for scheinen. This study confirmed that all relevant changes leading to the establishment of the (grammaticalized) evidential construction

Gabriele Diewald and Elena Smirnova, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany.