Gram - SEAS

Notes to pages 54-/40 235
opacity. A better reason for questioning whether ambiguity is a prerequisite for reanalysis might be
that in some sense every new analogy is a minor reanalysis (see Section 3.6) and therefore close
simi larity in structure might be sufficient for reanalysis to take place, not strict ambiguity.
5. Fleischman's translation is 'public matters.'
6. I. RObel1s (I 993a) claims that habeo had a "straightforward future meaning" even in the examples
cited in (12). However, obligation meaning cannot be ruled out.
4 Pragmatic factors
I. Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) have called this the "actuation problem."
2. The process by which inferences become polysemies is oftcn called "Iexicalization." However,
the term "Iexicalization" also refers to a different process whereby meaning distinctions that were
formerly expressed by independent morphemes come through phonological and other changes to
be monomorphemic (e.g., the forms lay versus lie, or set versus sit, are said to be "Iexicalized" as
a result of the loss of the former causative morpheme -i- that followed the verb stem) (see Section
5.7). It has also been used for "the systematic relations between meaning and surface expression"
in a language (Talmy 1985). To avoid confusion, we prefer to distinguish the processes by which
pragmatic inferences become polysemies by a different term, "semanticization."
3. However, for some (Indo-)Guyanese speakers, comer has been grammaticalized as a preposition,
e.g . . He lil'e comer olle rumshop 'He lives diagonally across the street from a rumshop' (John
Rickford, p.c.).
4. A related use is found in Halliday (1994 [1985]), who regards expansions of constituents, for example
expansion of NP to S (e.g., complementation), as metaphors or abstractions.
5. The speaker's viewpoint is minimal, except when directional go is contrasted with come (He lI'
goillg to see his Wlllt alld thell comillg to see Ilis sister).
6. The date of composition is a matter of continued debate, ranging from c. 750 to c. 1000 (see Bjork
and Obermeier 1997). We accept an eighth-century date.
5 The hypothesis of unidirectionality
I. While the II'ho-lI'holll distinction has become almost entirely obsolete, the clitic -s genitive is
remarkably stable, and indeed has been gaining ground (see Rosenbach 200 I for discussion of the
extension from [+animate] possessors to the [-animate] domain in POE).
2. We do not include the nominal genitive because this is more appropriately defined as a clitic, cf.
The mall acmss tIle street 'sfellce.
3. Timberlake translates as 'Does one think this to be a sin?'
4. "The genitive subject of the participial clause in a system without subject-to-object raising"
(Timberlake 1977: 147).
5. Because the proclitic numeral sa- otherwise appears only before classifiers, such examples may
wrongly suggest that it is the head noun which has been elided rather than the classifier.
6. Capitals used for consonants and vowels indicate primary accent, capitals for vowels only indicatc
secondary accent. Other prosodic details have been omitted here.
7. Thanks to Arnold Zwicky (p.c.) for this observation.
6 Clause-internal morphologica l changes
I. The term "morphologization" is sometimes also used for the development of phonological alternations
that occur as the result of phonological changes in specilic morphological contexts, in other
words, of morphophonemic alternations, as found in the English past-tense form -ed ([t d 3d]).