Persistence in
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
refers to one of the five principles by which
grammaticalisation can be detected while it is taking place. The other four are:
layering,
divergence
In vector calculus, divergence is a vector operator that operates on a vector field, producing a scalar field giving the quantity of the vector field's source at each point. More technically, the divergence represents the volume density of ...
,
specialisation, and
de-categorialisation.
"When a form undergoes grammaticalization from a
lexical to a
grammatical function, as long as it is grammatically viable some traces of its original lexical meanings tend to adhere to it, and details of its lexical history may be reflected in constraints on its grammatical distribution." (
Hopper
Hopper or hoppers may refer to:
Places
*Hopper, Illinois
* Hopper, West Virginia
* Hopper, a mountain and valley in the Hunza–Nagar District of Pakistan
* Hopper (crater), a crater on Mercury
People with the name
* Hopper (surname)
* Grace H ...
1991: 22)
"The principle of persistence relates the meaning and function of a grammatical form to its history as a
lexical morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
. This relationship is often completely opaque by the stage of
morphologisation, but during intermediate stages it may be expected that a form will be polysemous, and that one or more of its meaning will reflect a dominant earlier meaning." (Hopper 1991: 28) In other words, grammaticalisation can be a 'diachronic' explanatory parameter for certain otherwise hard-to-explain 'synchronic' (
semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
and distributional) properties of grammatical signs.
The lexical roots of a grammaticalised feature may remain visible in its grammatical function and may influence its grammatical distribution.
References
* Lessau, Donald A. A Dictionary of Grammaticalization. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1994.
*
Hopper, Paul J. “On some principles of grammaticization”. In Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Heine, eds. Approaches to Grammaticalization, Vol. I. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1991. pp. 17–36.
Historical linguistics