Pragmatic, syntactic and phonological evidence in favor of the grammaticalization of Northern Catalan negative poc/poca

• Assumpció Rost ^[2] ; Montserrat Batllori ^[1]
  1. [1] Universitat de Girona

     Universitat de Girona

     Gerona, España

     
  2. [2] Universitat de les Illes Balear
• Localización: Italian journal of linguistics, ISSN 1120-2726, Vol. 32, Nº. 2, 2020, págs. 3-32
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This paper focuses on the current synchronic interspeaker variation of the Northern Catalan negative expression poc (and its allomorph poca), which is examined from a prosodic, pragmatic and syntactic standpoint. Firstly, it offers a general description of the diachronic evolution of the quantitative adverb poc‘little’ and its first grammaticalization towards a negative emphatic polarity par-ticle. Secondly, it points to the prosodic, pragmatic and syntactic behavior of poc.neg in Modern Catalan and sets the differences between the two main values of this negator within the community of speakers that use it: (i) a prosodically non-neutral pragmatic activator POC.neg, and (ii) a prosodically neutral pragmatically unmarked negator poc.neg (generally used in Girona and Figueres). These differ-ences are taken as evidence in favor of a current reanalysis and/or grammaticali-zation process of poc/poca (poc.neg), in the latter speech variety, which involves its use as a negative head. Therefore, we put forward that in this variety poc.neghas undergone a ‘specifier to head’ grammaticalization within PolP (thus, being an instance of van Gelderen’s negative cycle). Last but not least, our argument is cru-cially supported by a phonetic test on intonation that proves, without a shred of doubt, that poc.neg and no ‘not’ pattern alike from a prosodic viewpoint, whereas the intonation contours concerning pla (a Northern Catalan negative emphatic polarity particle) clearly diverge in the same contexts. Taking into account the general understanding on the grammaticalization process itself (mostly concerning the intervention of semantic bleaching, pragmatic unmarking, prosodic or intona-tional unmarkedness and syntactic reanalysis), we conclude that the loss of prag-matic activation and the use of poc.neg in non-emphatic contexts can be taken as proofs of the grammaticalization of poc.neg into a PolP head