Gram - SEAS

50 3 Mechanisms: reanalysis and allalogy
One final point about the assumptions behind the model worth mentioning is
that the focus on universals privileges the uniformity of rule types and reasoning
types across languages and times. Indeed, what has come to be called the "uniformitarian
principle" (Labov 1974; Romaine 1982) is an essential ingredient of most
work in historical linguistics. According to this principle, the linguistic forces that
are evidenced today are in principle the same as those that operated in the past.
Operationally, this means that no earlier grammar or rule may be reconstructed for
a dead language that is not attested in a living one. There is no reason to believe
that grammaticalization did not occur in languages spoken ten thousand years ago
in much the same way as it does now.
Whatever our model for change, we need to consider the ways or "mechanisms"
by which change takes place and the factors that enable them to occur. In the remainder
ofthis chapter we foclls on the principal ways in which grammaticalization
may occur.
3.3 Reanalysis
In reanalysis, the hearer understands a form to have a structure and a
meaning that are different from those of the speaker, as when [Hamburg] + [er]
'item (of food) from Hamburg' is heard as [ham] + [burger] . Sooner or later
someone substitutes the word cheese or beef for ham; but this substitution is
merely the symptom of a change that has already occurred silently. The reanalysis
itself is covert until some recognizable modification in the forms reveals it. The
hamburger example illustrates reanalysis in a single lexical item; but syntactic
sequences may also be reanalyzed. In current English, for example, the sequence
tly and VERB has under some circumstances been reanalyzed as Auxiliary + Verb,
as I'll try alld contact hel: 'Try' in this use is distinct from 'try' in They have tried
alld fa iled to contact her, as well as from I'll fly to contact IleI: In I'll try and
cOlltact her, there is evidence that try and is stored as a single word:
(i) The and is intonationally and phonetically bound to try ('try-;m').
(ii) Only try, not tried, trying. tries, is possible (e.g., not ' He tries and contacts
her).
(iii) Adverbs may not intervene between tly and and (e.g., I'll fly hard to
contact her, but not * I'll fly hard and contact her).
Moreover, the meaning of try and is more modal-like than tly to. It signals the
agent's inability to achieve the complement verb and the speaker's lack of confidence
in the agent's success (Hopper 2002).