Acceso usuarios
, Sandra Montserrat Buendia (secret.) , Beatrice Schmid (voc.) This research study deals with the semantic evolution of the modal verbal periphrases "deure + INF" and "haver (a/de) + INF" in Old Catalan, from a cognitive perspective. It is a corpus study that describes the periphrasis grammaticalization, from the time they are formed in Latin language to the end of the 16th century. This process shows that from the prototypical modal meanings, the deontic necessity and external necessity, many new nuances emerge about the future and the inferential evidentiality. This causes changes in the configuration of the semantic network and the relationships between the meanings of each category (Geeraerts 1997). In this sense, the grammaticalization of these periphrases clarifies the interlinguistic regularities of semantic change (Traugott & Dasher 2002).
This study reflects on semantic change, the mechanisms involved and the motivations that cause it. Framed within of Langacker¿s Cognitive Grammar (1987, 1991a, 1999) and Pelyvás¿ contributions (1996, 2000, 2006), it describes the semantic change in terms of a fading force and a progressive subjectification. Constructions evolve as the new uses show a different conceptual scheme to the conventional ones. In fact, in the case of the periphrases "deure + INF" and "haver (a/de) + INF" some changes can be observed in the conceptual scheme when the future values and the inferentials arise, so that the force interaction disappears and exposes the speaker¿s conceptualization, which becomes the locus of potency.
