[to appear in Salvador Pons Bordería & Oscar Loureda Lamas, eds.

2018, Beyond
Grammaticalization and Discourse Markers. New Issues in the Study of Language Change.
Leiden: Brill.]

Cyclic phenomena in the evolution of pragmatic markers. Examples

from Romance.
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
The University of Manchester

1 Introduction
In this paper, I discuss the phenomenon of cyclicity in semantic/pragmatic change
(Hansen 2014), or cycles of pragmaticalization, as it has also been called (Ghezzi & Molinelli
2014). While it has long been known that diachronic change at the level of morphosyntax
may exhibit cyclic forms of evolution (von der Gabelentz 1901, Jespersen 1917, Meillet
1921), the discovery of cyclicity at the level of semantic/pragmatic change is a very recent
one. The chief objective of the paper is thus to lay some foundations for further study of the
phenomenon, as well as to explore its potential impact on our understanding of language
change.
In section 2 below, the exposition takes its point of departure in what is known about
cyclicity at other levels of linguistic description. I look more closely at two specific
morphosyntactic cycles and briefly touch upon the possible involvement of pragmatics in
those cycles. Section 3, which is dedicated to the presentation of semantic/pragmatic
cyclicity, draws a fundamental distinction between semasiological and onomasiological
cyclicity. In sections 3.1 and 3.2, I adduce a total of four case studies from Latin and
Romance, illustrating each of the two subtypes of cyclicity with two different examples.
Section 4 draws some conclusions on the basis of the preceding discussion and suggests
avenues of further research in this area.

2 Cycles at other levels of linguistic description

That some linguistic changes seem to be cyclic in nature was first noticed at the
beginning of the 20th century, by scholars such as Ernst von der Gabelentz (1901), Otto
Jespersen (1917), and Antoine Meillet (1921), and there currently appears to be broad
acceptance, within the scholarly community, that the occurrence of cyclic changes constitutes
an empirical fact about language.
The past decade has seen a renewal of interest in cyclic phenomena in language change.
In particular, a number of studies (e.g. van Gelderen, ed. 2009, van Gelderen 2011, Larrivée
& Ingham, eds. 2011), have focused on (morpho)syntactic cycles, but others, such as
Bermudez-Otero & Trousdale (2012) have posited the existence of cycles at the level of
phonological change, as well.1 In this section, I will consider only the former type.

1
A number of studies suggest that changes at the lexical level may be cyclical in nature, as well, without
however explicitly using the term “cycle” to describe them (e.g. Stern 1931: 185ff, Lüdtke 1986, Koch &
Oesterreicher 1996, Blank 1997: 394ff).

1
 Van Gelderen (2011) posits a total of seven types of (morpho)syntactic cyclicity that
have been observed across a number of different languages, viz. what she calls (i) the subject
agreement cycle, (ii) the object agreement cycle, (iii) the pronominal copula cycle, (iv) the
dependent marking cycles, (v) the DP cycle, (vi) the tense-mood-aspect cycles, and (vii) the
negative cycles. While this is not the place to discuss all of these seven cycles, let alone in
any detail, a brief overview of two of them will give the reader a sense of what is meant.
The subject agreement cycle and the particular negative cycle known as the Jespersen
Cycle (Jespersen 1917) are both widely known and instantiated in French, as shown in the
examples below, all of which have the same meaning, namely ‘If I do not say it to him’:

(1) [Old French]

Se (je) ne li di (pas/mie)
If-SUBORD.CONJ 1PS.PRO NEG 3PS.DAT.PRO say-1PS.PRES.IND NEG
(2) [Modern Standard French]
Si je ne le lui dis pas
If-SUBORD.CONJ 1PS.SUBJ.CL NEG.CL 3PS.OBJ.CL 3PS.DAT.CL say-1PS.PRES.IND NEG
(3) [Contemporary colloquial French]
Si (moi) je (ne) le lui dis pas
If-SUBORD.CONJ 1PS.TOP.PRO 1PS.SUBJ.CL NEG 3PS.OBJ.CL 3PS.DAT.CL say-1PS.PRES.IND NEG

Starting with the subject agreement cycle, the subject of the clause was, at the earliest
stage of French, marked inflectionally on the finite verb di, in addition to which a
pronominal subject je could optionally be added, as seen in (1) above. Like Latin, Old
French was thus a pro-drop language, and the use of subject pronouns was largely confined to
pragmatically marked contexts, such as contrastive or emphatic ones (Togeby 1974: 104).
In the course of the Middle Ages, however, subject pronouns lost their pragmatically
marked status, became obligatorily used, and gradually cliticized to the finite verb, yielding
the Modern Standard French pattern shown in (2). During the same period, the subject-
marking verbal inflections all but disappeared in the spoken channel, such that the presence
of a subject clitic may be, and often is, the only indicator of the person and number of a non-
NP subject in modern spoken French.
At the third stage, it became possible to add a co-referring disjunctive pronoun
alongside the subject clitic in clauses that did not feature an NP subject, as seen in (3). While
this was originally done for purposes of expressing contrast and/or emphasis, the presence of
a disjunctive pronoun has become increasingly frequent in contemporary spoken French, to
the point that the clitic has been argued to have been reduced to the status of an agreement
marker, the disjunctive pronoun being perceived as the true exponent of the subject (or,
perhaps more accurately, the topic, cf. Lambrecht 1981: 51f).
Thus, the subject cycle in French can be summarized as in (4), although it must be
noted that the final stage of cycle has not yet been brought to completion:

(4) Obligatory suffixal person/number marking on finite verb + optional addition of

subject pronoun
> Obligatory subject pronoun + loss of suffixal person/number marking in the spoken
channel
2
 > Obligatory subject clitic + optional addition of disjunctive pronoun
> Disjunctive subject/topic pronoun + preverbal agreement marker

It is worth noting that discourse pragmatics plays a role at the first and third stage, both
of the optional pronoun types originally being used for specific pragmatic purposes.
Moving on to the negative cycle, we see in (1) above that, at the oldest stages of French,
clause negation was obligatorily expressed by a preverbal marker, ne (< Latin NON). In
addition, a postverbal marker, typically either pas (< Latin PASSU[M] ‘step’) or mie (< Latin
MICA[M] ‘crumb’) could optionally be added. For Jespersen (1917: 4), the addition of the
postverbal marker was triggered by the phonological reduction of Latin NON to ne, a form
that he perceived to be too weak to express a semantically crucial notion such as negation. As
shown in Hansen (2009), however, the postverbal negative marker was originally used in
pragmatically marked contexts, in which the negated proposition or its underlying positive
counterpart was either already evoked or readily inferrable.
By the Classical period (17th-18th c.), ne had become cliticized to the finite verb and
postverbal pas had lost its pragmatically marked status and had become fully
grammaticalized as an obligatory part of standard clause negation in French. To this day,
Modern Standard French of the written variety thus prescribes the use of bipartite ne…pas to
express that form of negation, as seen in (2). As shown by Rowlett (1998), however, there
can be little doubt that pas is in Modern French the essential exponent of standard clause
negation, whereas ne is arguably reduced to the status of a semantically empty agreement
marker.
Finally, in contemporary colloquial spoken French, standard clause negation is
obligatorily expressed by postverbal pas, whereas the preverbal clitic ne is usually elided, as
shown in (3). However, in some varieties at least, such as colloquial Swiss French (Fonseca-
Greber 2007), it seems that ne may be undergoing exaptation (Lass 1990), such that it can be
used in pragmatically marked contexts with a function that seems very reminiscent of that
which was fulfilled by the postverbal negative markers in Medieval French.
In other words, at the level of morphosyntax, the negative cycle in French takes the
form in (5):

(5) Preverbal negative adverb optionally reinforced by a postverbal denominal marker

> Bipartite negator consisting of a preverbal negative clitic and a postverbal negative
adverb
> Postverbal negative adverb optionally accompanied by a preverbal (agreement)
clitic

At the same time, however, the results of Hansen (2009) and Fonseca-Greber (2007)
together suggest that discourse pragmatics may play a role in this cycle, in as much as there is
evidence of a concomitant cycle of a slightly different nature, namely one where an originally
obligatory, purely grammatical, marker of negation and a discourse-pragmatically
conditioned optional marker have swapped functions while retaining their original syntactic
positions, as shown in Figure 1 (from Hansen 2013: 66):

3
Figure 1: A discourse-pragmatically conditioned negative cycle in French

Medieval French
Subj ne[obligatory, pragmatically neutral] Vb (pas)[optional, pragmatically marked])

Subj (ne[optional, pragmatically marked]) Vb pas[obligatory, pragmatically neutral]

Contemporary French

Importantly, Meillet (1921: 140) observed that morphosyntactic cycles do not typically
take the form of cycles in the strict sense, but are in fact more akin to spirals, in as much as
the end result is rarely if ever structurally identical to the initial stage. This is evidenced by
both of the developments summarized in (4) and (5) above: thus, with respect to the subject
agreement cycle in French, Lambrecht (1981: 52) argues that French has evolved from being
subject-prominent to being topic-prominent, disjunctive pronouns in colloquial speech being
topic markers, rather than subjects. As far as negation is concerned, except in infinitival
clauses, the newer negative marker pas has thus far remained in postverbal position, rather
than moving into the preverbal slot occupied by the original marker ne.
It will be shown below that cycles at the semantic/pragmatic level are analogous in this
respect, and that when items are renewed, the range of senses/functions of the new item is
typically not exactly identical to that of the item it replaces, but rather overlaps with it.

3 Semantic/pragmatic cyclicity
While the idea that there might be cyclic developments at the level of pragmatics was
thus already adumbrated in Hansen (2013), the notion of semantic/pragmatic cyclicity as it
will be used in the remainder of this paper was first explicitly posited as a separate
phenomenon by Hansen (2014) and, independently, by Ghezzi & Molinelli (2014).
Hansen (2014) analyzes the evolution and functions of three etymologically closely
related particles, viz. Latin IAM, Old French ja, and Modern French déjà, observing on the
one hand, that these forms have overlapping, but not identical, ranges of uses, and on the
other, that each particle appears to have originated as a temporal/aspectual adverb functioning
at the content level, only gradually developing a number of context-level uses.
The terms “content-level” vs “context-level” uses are proposed by Hansen (2008: 14ff)
as alternatives to the more commonly used terms “semantic” vs “pragmatic” uses of specific
linguistic items and constructions. Thus, content-level uses of items and constructions:

bear saliently either on a state-of-affairs in some real or imagined world that is referred
to in their host clause or on the relation between that state-of-affairs and other (real or
imagined) states-of-affairs. […] [C]ontext-level uses, on the other hand, primarily
express speakers’ comments on the relations between described states-of-affairs and the
discourse itself […] or the wider speech situation. (Hansen 2008: 16)

4
 This alternative terminology, which will be used in the rest of this paper, is preferred
because, although the distinction between content- and context-level uses resembles the
distinction between “semantic” and “pragmatic” uses drawn by many other scholars working
on connectives, it is in fact orthogonal to the semantics/pragmatics distinction, independently
of whether the latter is drawn in terms of (non-)truth-conditionality or (non-)codedness in
language.
Returning to IAM > ja > déjà, it thus appears that, in the evolution from Latin to French,
what is etymologically the same form has three times renewed its range of functions, starting
each time from a similar point of departure at the content level and developing similar
context-level extensions. (For further details, see section 3.1 below).
In a paper published in the same volume, Ghezzi & Molinelli (2014) adduce the
examples of two Latin speech act verbs ROGO (‘I ask’) and QUAESO (‘I pray’), both of which
developed a use as politeness markers broadly corresponding to English please, alongside
their use in predications. These authors show that, in Modern Italian, similar functions are
fulfilled by the speech act verbs chiedo (‘I ask’) and prego (‘I pray’), respectively. While
chiedo is indirectly etymologically related to QUAESO (being derived from QUAERO ‘I seek’),
prego is unrelated to either of the Latin verbs. What we have in these cases is thus a similar
content-level function repeatedly serving as the basis for a similar context-level extension,
but using unrelated forms for the purpose at different stages at language evolution. (For
further details, see section 3.2 below.)
Taken together, the case studies presented by Hansen (2014) and by Ghezzi &
Molinelli (2014) suggest that semantic/pragmatic cycles may be of two basic types,
corresponding to the two basic perspectives on the study of linguistic meaning, i.e.
semasiology and onomasiology. These two proposed types will be defined and exemplified in
sections 3.1 and 3.2, respectively.

3.1 Semasiological cyclicity

When studying linguistic meaning from a semasiological perspective, we take our point
of departure in one or more linguistic forms, and look at the meanings and functions those
forms may have. Accordingly, if one and the same form, or several etymologically closely
related forms, repeatedly develop(s) similar context-level functions from a similar point of
departure at the content level, I propose that we are dealing with semasiological cyclicity.
In this section, two case studies of semasiological cyclicity in Romance will be adduced,
involving the evolution from Latin to French and Catalan, respectively.

3.1.1 Latin IAM > Old French ja > Modern French déjà
As already mentioned, the evolution of Latin IAM (‘as of now’) and its descendants, Old
French ja (‘as of now’) and Modern French déjà (‘already’ < dès ‘as of’ + ja), is an example
of such a pattern. A detailed analysis is offered in Hansen (2014)2, so only the main points
will be repeated here.

2
The analysis of IAM offered in Hansen (2014) is to a large extent based on Kroon & Risselada (2002).

5
 Latin IAM and Old French ja share a purely temporal sense (‘as of now’), which is
exemplified in (6)-(7) below:3

(6) age, iam concedo non esse miseros qui mortui sunt (Cicero, Tusc. 1.14, 1st c. BCE)
‘well, as of now, I grant that those who are dead are not miserable’
(7) Dame, fait il, ja m’en vois gié Comme li vostre chevaliers. (Renart, L’escoufle, p. 49,
v. 1460, 1200-02)
‘Mylady, he says, as of now I consider myself your knight.’

This use is not available to ja’s successor déjà, but all three particles share a temporal-
aspectual, basically inchoative, sense corresponding to English ‘already’, and which is
illustrated in (8)-(10)4, as well as the related temporal-aspectual scalar use seen in (11)-(13):

(8) eius libertum Apollonium iam tum equidem, cum ille viveret, et magni faciebam et
probabam (Cicero, Fam. 13.16.1, 1st c. BCE – from Kroon & Risselada 2002: 66)
‘I already respected and liked his freedman Apollonius very much when he was still
alive’
(9) Sire, melement est, li rois Richars est arrivez a Baione atout granz genz, et sachiez
qu’il vos ja fait grant domage. (Menestrel de Reims, p. 16v, 1260)
‘Sire, there’s trouble, King Richard has arrived in Bayonne with a large army, and you
should know that he is already doing you great harm.’
(10) Luc dormait déjà quand je suis rentrée.
‘Luc was already asleep when I came home.’
(11) sex menses iam hic nemo habitat (Plautus, Most. 954, 3rd-2nd c. BCE – from Kroon &
Risselada 2002: 66)
‘No-one has lived here for six months already.’
(12) Sire, en tel maniere con je vous cont, empris je cest pont a garder, que je ai ja gardé
III mois entiers. (Tristan en prose, p. 78, after 1240)
‘Sire, in the way I’m telling you I took this bridge, which I have guarded for three
months already.’
(13) Il a appelé cinq fois déjà.
‘He’s called five times already.’

All three particles likewise seem to have a non-temporal scalar use, as in (14)-(16),
although, in Old French, examples of this use are not straightforwardly distinguished from
what is called the “assertive” use of ja below. In the non-temporal scalar use, a pragmatic
3
Notice, however, that only ja, but not IAM, can occur with a purely temporal sense in negated clauses, ne…ja
corresponding to English ‘never’, as in the following example:
(i) …et li quens lor jura que ja a mort ne a vie n’averoit danree de sa terre… (Ménéstrel de Reims, p.
18v, c. 1260)
‘…and the count swore to them that never in death or in life would he have the tiniest parcel of his
land…’
4
In negated clauses, however, the temporal-aspectual use is only fully entrenched in Latin (NON IAM/IAM NON
corresponding to ‘not…yet/anymore’). In Late Middle French text, ne…ja is sporadically translatable as ‘not
anymore’, but the purely temporal sense ‘never’ is preferred. Déjà very rarely co-occurs with negation, and
when it does it always has a pragmatically marked interpretation.

6
scale is evoked, and the state of affairs marked by the particle is viewed as occupying a
higher rung on this scale than might have been expected. Thus, in (14), a scale of temerity in
the choice of one’s enemies is evoked, such that the gods occupy a higher rung on that scale
than the Roman Senate, i.e. waging war against the gods requires greater temerity than
waging war against the Senate. In (15), assuming that this example is correctly interpreted as
instanciating the non-temporal scalar use, ja suggests that it would be unexpected for people
to believe the news in question, even very reluctantly. In other words, outright disbelief
represents the lower rung on the scale that the speaker would have expected to be valid.
Finally, in (16), déjà evokes a scale of “(non)optimality”, where pas mal du tout (‘not at all
bad’) occupies a rung which is somewhere above the bottom one:

(14) non cum senatu modo sed iam cum dis immortalibus C. Flaminium bellum gerere
(Livy 21.63.6, 1st c. BCE-1st c. CE – from Kroon & Risselada 2002: 66)
‘that G. Flaminius was at war not just with the Senate but with the immortal gods
themselves’
(15) Et ciertes se il estoit bien voirs, si le creroient ja moult envis li preudomme de cest
païs. (Merlin suite litt., p. 9, 1230-35)
‘And certainly if it were in fact true, the brave men of this country would believe it
only very reluctantly/very reluctantly indeed.’
(16) Max ne va probablement pas faire d’études universitaires : pour lui, avoir décroché
son bac ce n’est déjà pas mal du tout.
‘Max will probably not go to university. For him to have completed high school is
actually not at all bad.’

Outside the temporal domain, Latin IAM and Old French ja also share an “assertive” use,
in which the particles mark strong affirmation, as in (17)-(18) below. This use is very
common in Old French, but considerably less so in Latin. While déjà has no equivalent use,
that particle has developed a few context-level uses that bear a certain family resemblance to
the assertive use of IAM/ja, in particular the “thematic” use shown in (19), which marks its
host proposition as the first that comes to mind of a series of arguments for a particular
conclusion, thus indirectly marking that proposition as being particularly assertable:

(17) potuit esse innocens Falcula. iam ergo aliquis Oppianicum gratiis condemnavit,
(Cicero, Pro A. Cluentio, 1st c. BCE)
‘Falcula may have been innocent. Thus, indeed, someone condemned Oppianicus
without being paid,’
(18) Sire cumpain, faites le vos de gred ? Ja est ço Rollant, ki tant vos soelt amer !
(Roland, v. 2000-2001, c. 1060)
‘My noble friend, do you do it on purpose? In truth, it is Roland, who has always
loved you!’
(19) Je pense que Sylvie est de loin la meilleure candidate : déjà, son CV est excellent, et
puis elle présente vraiment bien.
‘I think Sylvie is by far the best candidate. For one thing, her CV is excellent, and
moreover she presents very well.’

7
 Finally, both IAM and ja can be used to mark concession, as in (20)-(21). Notice,
however, that the two particles do not function in quite the same way. IAM is used with SI +
present subjunctive to turn a potential conditional into a concessive conditional, and as the
two alternative translations of (20) show, it is not clear that this use is really distinct from the
assertive use of IAM just discussed. Ja in concessive structures, on the other hand, originates
in a collocation consisting of assertive ja + êtreSubj ‘be’ + (ce) + (que), which gradually
becomes fully grammaticalized as a conjunction ja soit ce que introducing realis concessives:

(20) nunc, si iam res placeat, agenda tamen viam non video (Cic., Att., 1st c. BCE – from
Kroon & Risselada 2002: 67)
‘as it is, even if I were to approve of this/if I were indeed to approve of this, I see no
way of going to work’
(21) Vray est, dist elle, ma dame, que je suis femme comme vous estez ; ja soit ce que pour
me dissimuler me soye mise en habillemens d’omme comme vous veez a vos yeulx.
(Artois, p. 123, 1453-67)
‘It is true, she said, that I am a woman like you ; even though to disguise myself I
have put on men’s clothing as you can see with your own eyes.’

Table 1 below summarizes the similarities and the differences between the three
particles. In addition to the uses mentioned above, there are a few that only pertain to one
particle, for the most part déjà. Details of these can be found in Hansen (2008).

Table 1: Uses of IAM, ja, and déjà

IAM ja déjà
Temporal + + -
Temporal negative - + -
Temporal NPI - + -
Phasal adverb
● Inchoative + + +
● Discontinuative + (+) (+)
● Negative continuative + - -
Iterative - - +
Scalar temporal-aspectual + + +
Scalar non-temporal + (+) +
Focus particle + - -
Assertive + + -
Categorizing - - +
Thematic - - +
Conjunctional - - +
Concessive + + -
Imperative - - +
Interrogative - - +

8
 The fact that there is overlap, but not identity, between the uses of IAM, ja, and déjà
shows very clearly that we are not dealing with one and the same particle in different
morphophonological guises. Examples like (22) below, in which ja and déjà co-occur in the
same sentence is further evidence of this. Notice that, while the meaning of desja is clearly
temporal/aspectual in (22), that of ja is ambiguous between its content-level temporal sense
and its context-level assertive sense:

(22) Desja ma lire, un honneur tu reçois, / Et ja desja la race des François / Me veut
nombrer entre ceus qu’elle loue. (Ronsard, Premier Livres des Odes, p. 142, 1550)
‘Already, my lyre, you receive an honor, / And now/indeed already the French
people / Wants to count me among those that they praise’

Kroon & Risselada (2002), in their analysis of IAM, find no evidence of historical
change, but the deictic etymology of the particle (Ernout & Meillet 1979: 304) suggests that
the purely temporal sense is likely to be the original one, from which the others have been
derived. As for ja, Hansen (2014: 153) observes that its purely temporal use accounts for 89%
of instances in the early 11th c., dropping to 65% in the 14th century, and that in negative
contexts, which generally speaking appear to be more linguistically conservative, ja is almost
exclusively temporal throughout the Medieval period. These data strongly support the
hypothesis that the purely temporal sense of ja is likewise diachronically prior to its other
uses (Hansen 2014: 153). Finally, Hansen (2008: 169, 218) shows that in the case of déjà,
the temporal-aspectual sense is clearly diachronically prior, and that context-level senses of
that particle do not start to develop until the Classical French period, once ja has disappeared
from the language, a process that took place during the Renaissance.
It seems, thus, that each of the three particles starts off with a content-level, temporal(-
aspectual) sense and gradually develops context-level uses, only to be replaced by a new, but
etymologically related particle. The meaning contribution of the replacing particle is initially
confined to the content level, and it only subsequently takes on context-levels uses, a number
of which are identical to, or reminiscent of, those of its content-level predecessor.

3.1.2 Late Latin PER HOC > Catalan però/per això > per (ai)xò
Semasiological cyclicity is not attested only in French. While she does not use the term
“cyclicity”, a study by Cuenca (1992-93: 188-193) suggests that, in certain varieties of
contemporary Catalan, for instance in Barcelona, the concessive-adversative marker però
(‘however’/’but’) and the etymologically equivalent causal/concessive connective per (ai)xò
have likewise undergone a process of change that conforms to the definition of
semasiological cyclicity given in section 3.1 above.
Però and per (ai)xò both originate in a Latin prepositional phrase PER HOC (‘through’ +
demonstrative), which in Late Latin had developed a causal sense (‘because of that’), as
shown in (23) below:

(23) Tunc praedictus Exhilaratus puer per hoc quod in vino repperit expavit malum quod
fecit. (St Gregory, Vita Benedicti, 6th c.)

9
 ‘Then the afore-mentioned servant Exhilaratus, because of what he’d found in the
wine, became frightened by the evil he’d done.’

By the Medieval period, PER HOC had undergone univerbation and phonological
reduction and had been lexicalized as però 5 , originally an adverbial connective with a
concessive sense, as seen in (24) below:

(24) …que ell nos retria los castells e les muntanyes, en tal manera però que ell pogués
honradamente viure (Jaume I, 13th c. – from Cuenca 1992-93: 190)
‘…that he would render to us the castles and the mountains, in such a way, however,
that he may live with dignity.’

Cuenca (1992-93: 192) hypothesizes, following Corominas (1980), that this change in
meaning from causal to concessive may have come about because PER HOC was preferentially
used in negated clauses. Però subsequently undergoes grammaticalization as an adversative
conjunction, exemplified in (25). As both the conjunction and the concessive adverbial
continue to be used in present-day Catalan, this is thus an example of what Hopper (1991: 24)
calls “divergence” in grammaticalization:

(25) Ell nominaria aquell que’s pensa que ho sia, però no ho sabria certament. (Metge,
14th c. – from Cuenca 1992-93: 190)
‘He’d name the one it was thought to be, but he wouldn’t know for sure.’

Alongside concessive-adversative però, however, Catalan also makes use of the

prepositional phrase per això, which corresponds exactly to the original Latin construction
that was the source of the conjunction però. Per això is causal in meaning in Standard
Catalan, as exemplified in (26), but in some varieties, incl. contemporary Barcelonian, it has
developed further and has added the concessive use seen in (27). In this use, its form is
frequently reduced to per xò in the spoken channel:

(26) M’ha enganyat moltes vegades. Per això no el crec. (from Cuenca 1992-93: 192)
‘He’s cheated me many times. For that reason, I don’t believe him.’
(27) Estic segura que t’ha dit que vindrà ; no t’ho creguis, per (ai)xò. (from Cuenca 1992-
93 : 192)
‘I’m sure he told you he’d come ; don’t you believe it, though.’

In this case, at the first stage of the cycle, PER HOC functions at the content level,
marking real-world causal relations between states of affairs. One of its direct Catalan
descendants, the univerbated connective però takes on context-level functions, its different
senses correlating with different degrees of grammaticalization. The causal content-level
function previously fulfilled by PER HOC is inherited by another direct descendant, the non-

5
A variant, emperò, whose etymology is uncertain, but which may be derived from *INDE (‘hence’)/ET
(‘and’)/UNDE (‘whence’)/IN (‘in’) PER HOC was used in the same ways as però (Cuenca 1992-92: 188ff).

10
univerbated per això. This expression in turn goes on to develop a concessive context-level
function, much like the one però had in its initial stage of development. This is illustrated
graphically in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2: A causal > concessive (> adversative) cycle in Catalan

PER HOC (causal)

però (concessive connective) per això (causal connective)

però (adversative conjunction) per (ai)xò (concessive connective)

These developments thus exemplify a second instance of semasiological cyclicity,

demonstrating that the phenomenon is observable in more than one language, and with more
than one type of pragmatic marker.

3.2 Onomasiological cyclicity

The onomasiological perspective on linguistic meaning goes in the opposite direction
from the semasiological perspective. In other words, onomasiology starts with a particular
meaning or function and aims to discover what specific forms can express that meaning or
function in a given language. Thus, if we observe that a similar context-level
meaning/function or set of meanings/functions is renewed several times by etymologically
unrelated forms with similar content-level source meanings, I propose that we have a case of
onomasiological cyclicity.
As in section 3.1, two examples of onomasiological cyclicity in Romance will be
adduced here, involving the evolution from Latin to French and Italian, respectively.

3.2.1 Latin NUNC > French or > maintenant

The Latin particle NUNC (‘now’), its Old French replacement or (< Late Lat. HA(C)
HORA ‘at that hour’) and the Modern French equivalent maintenant (< Vulg.Lat. *MANU
TENENDO ‘holding in/with one’s hand’) together seem to constitute an onomasiological cycle.
For a detailed analysis of the evolution of these three particles, I refer to Hansen (2018)6, but
essentially, what we find is that all three share the same temporal use, as a deictic adverb
designating the moment of speech, cf. (28)-(30):7

6
NUNC has been studied individually by Risselada (1996), and or by Antoine (1962), Buridant (2000), Librova
(2008), Ollier (1988, 1989, 1990, 2000a/b), and Nølke (2005). Maintenant has been the object of an even larger
number of studies, e.g. Celle (2004), Mellet (2008), Nef (1980), and Nyan (1998). In addition, Bertin (2001)
and Loobuyck (n.d.) have looked at the evolution from or to maintenant.
7
A few subtypes of this use exist, which are shared by the three particles. These are designated in Table 2 as
“transposed”, “correlative”, and “metadiscursive”, respectively. In addition, maintenant has an older anaphoric

11
(28) ita ancilla mea quae fuit hodie, sua nunc est. (Plautus, Per., 472, 3rd-2nd c. BCE –
from Risselada 1996: 110)
‘Thus, the servant girl who was mine until today, is now free [lit. ‘her own’]’
(29) Or est en Norwiz l’evesquié Dunt en Tiedfort fu ja la sié. (Description d’Engleterre, p.
40, c. 1139– from Loobuyck n.d.: 157)
‘The bishopry that used to be in Tiedfort is now in Norwich.’
(30) Je suis chez moi maintenant.
‘I’m home now.’

The two French particles, but not Latin NUNC, also share the modal-particle-like use
exemplified in (31)-(32), in which or/maintenant function as illocutionary boosters (typically
– but not exclusively – in non-declaratives sentences), while also marking a shift in common
ground:

(31) L’empereur commence a dire : Or m’entendez, fait il, biaus sire, … (G. de Coinci,
Miracles, t.2, p. 137, 1218-1227 – from Loobuyck n.d.: 160)
‘The emperor starts to say, Now hear me, he says, brave lords,…’
(32) Il insulte son oncle, maintenant ! Sors d’ici ! (Mauriac, Mystère Frontenac, p. 118,
1933 – from Bertin 2001: 46)
‘He’s insulting his uncle now! Get out of here!’

Finally, all three particles can be used as connectives marking various types of shifts in
discourse, as illustrated in (33)-(35). As shown in Table 2 below, the types of shifts marked
by each particle overlap with, but are not identical to, the types of shifts that can be marked
by the other two particles.

(33) Quid quaeris? Permoleste tuli. Nulla enim abs te per hos dies epistula inanis aliqua
re utili et suavi venerat. Nunc, si quid in ea epistula quam a.d. XVI Kl. Mai. Dedisti
fuit historia dignum, scribe quam primum, ne ignoremus; (Cicero, Att. 2.8.1, 1st c.
BCE – from Risselada 1996 : 110)
‘Need I say more? I was very annoyed. For no letter had come from you recently
without something useful and pleasant in it. Now, if there was anything worthwhile in
that letter you sent me on the 15th of April, write to me straight away so I won’t be left
in ignorance;’
(34) Ce chevalier, / qui ceens est, est l' homme ou monde que je plus / ayme; et ne
vouldroye pour rien qui fust qu' il se / partist de moy sans aultrement avoir parlé a luy.
/ Or ne me peut il bonnement dire ce qu' il a sur le / cueur, sinon entre nous deux et a
part; et je ne m'y / puis trouver si tu ne vas tenir ma place devers monseigneur. (CNN,
p. 248, c. 1456-67)

temporal use with the meaning ‘immediately’ or ‘just a moment ago’, which is the source of its deictic use (cf.
Hansen subm.).

12
 ‘This knight, who’s here, is the man I love most in the world; and for all the world I
would not have him leave me without my having spoken to him. However, he cannot
tell me what is really on his mind, except under four eyes and away from others; and I
cannot be there if you don’t go and take my place at my husband’s side.’
(35) Ça ne me dit pas vraiment. Maintenant, si tu insistes...
‘I’m not really keen on that. Mind you, if you insist...’

The uses of NUNC, or, and maintenant, as well as the relations between them are
represented in Table 2, which shows significant overlap, but not complete identity, between
the particles at both the content level and the context level:8

Table 2: Uses of NUNC, or, and maintenant

NUNC or maintenant
Anaphoric temporal use - - +
Deictic temporal use + + +
● Transposed temporal-deictic use + + +
● Correlative use + + +
● Metadiscursive use + + +
Quasi-modal particle - + +
Connective marking shifts + + +
● Shift from digression to main point + - -
● Shift to move implying conclusion + + -
● Shift from general statement to - + -
particular case
● Shift to minor premiss - + -
● Shift to contrasting move + + +
● Shift to new stage in narrative - + -
● Shift to different type of speech act + + +
● Hedging function - - +

As was the case with IAM (cf. section 3.1), not enough is known about the diachronic
evolution of NUNC, but there are etymological reasons to believe that its temporal content-
level use is the older one (Ernout & Meillet 1967: 450). In addition, Risselada (1996: 124)
notes that its use as a discourse connective is confined to a narrower range of genres, mainly
more informal and/or spoken ones. This observation likewise suggests that the context-level
use of NUNC represents a polysemic extension of its temporal-deictic sense.
With respect to French, the temporal-deictic sense of NUNC is initially taken over by or
in Old French. The quasi-modal particle use of or is also common already at this stage, but it
is worth noting that, although the deictic-temporal sense is frequently quite attenuated in this
use, it is never completely absent from it. Discourse-connective or can be found sporadically
in Old French, but this latter use only really develops in the Middle French period (mid-13th-
16th c.), at which time the marker becomes fixed in clause-initial position. Uses of the
temporal-deictic sense decrease in the course of Middle French and disappear in the Classical
French period (17th-18th c.), along with the quasi-modal particle uses, such that or continues
8
Bulleted uses represent subtypes of the non-bulleted use listed immediately above.

13
to exist in Modern French only as a discourse connective, which is nowadays confined to
relatively formal registers.
Maintenant acquires its temporal-deictic sense in late Old French. Although a small
number of instances of maintenant marking shifts and/or contradictions can be found in
Medieval French texts, neither of its context-level uses, i.e. the quasi-modal particle use and
the discourse connective uses, develops fully until the Classical and Modern periods. As a
discourse connective maintenant differs from or in that maintenant always seems to have the
function of retrospectively hedging the contents or implicatures of part of the preceding
discourse. This function is not found with or as a discourse connective, which – when found
in adversative contexts – is much more strongly adversative than maintenant.
Similarly to the IAM > ja > déjà cycle, it thus appears that several rounds of diachronic
change have taken place in the case of NUNC > or > maintenant, each new particle initially
replacing the previous one in its temporal-deictic content-level uses, and subsequently
developing a very similar, but not identical, range of context-level uses.

3.2.2 Latin ROGO and QUAESO > Italian chiedo and prego
As was the case with semasiological cyclicity, we find that semantic/pragmatic changes
conforming to the definition of onomasiological cyclicity proposed in section 3.1 above, are
also attested in other Romance languages besides French.
Thus, Ghezzi & Molinelli (2014) explicitly adduce the development of the Latin speech
act verbs ROGO (‘I ask’) and QUAESO (‘I pray/request’), along with that of their Italian
equivalents chiedo (‘I ask’ < Lat. QUAERO ‘I seek’) and prego (‘I pray’ < Lat. PRECOR), as
examples of what they call a pragmaticalization cycle. These authors do not, however,
identify this form of semantic/pragmatic cyclicity as specifically onomasiological in nature,
in contradistinction to semasiological cases like IAM > ja > déjà (cf. section 3.1.1 above).
In both languages, all four of these speech acts verbs have similar content-level source
meanings and uses, with the 1st p.sg. present indicative forms denoting a more or less deferent
performance of a directive speech act, as shown in (36)-(39):

(36) te Jupiter quaeso Amphitruoni ut semper iratus sies (Plautus, Amph. 3.2.52, 3rd-2nd C.
BCE – from Ghezzi & Molinelli 2014 : 69)
‘I pray you, Jupiter, to always be angry with Amphitryon’
(37) acrius te rogo ut plane ad nos advoles (Cicero, Att. II.24, 1st c. BCE – from Ghezzi &
Molinelli 2014: 70)
‘I ask you more earnestly to literally fly to us’
(38) Io priego Idio che vi dea il buon anno (Boccaccio, Decameron III.8, 1353 – from
Ghezzi & Molinelli 2014: 78)
‘I pray God that he will give you a good year’
(39) Vi chiedo una grazia soltanto (Goldoni, Il burbero benifico, III.7, 1771 – from Ghezzi
& Molinelli 2014: 78)
‘I ask you just one favor’

In both languages, these same 1st p.sg. present indicative forms go on to develop very
similar context-level uses as pragmatic markers signaling polite requests, cf. (40)-(43) below:

14
(40) sed quaeso Hercle, agedum aspice ad me (Plautus, Capt. 570, 3rd-2nd c. BCE – from
Ghezzi & Molinelli 2014: 73)
‘but please, by Hercules, come then, look at me’
(41) ita rogo quam primum aliquit (denariorum) mi mitte (Vindolanda Tablets II, 343, 14-
15, 1st-2nd c. CE – from Ghezzi & Molinelli 2014: 72)
‘so please send me some (money) as soon as possible’
(42) prego prego/ finisca pure (C-Oral-Rom, imedspo1 – from Ghezzi & Molinelli 2014:
78)
‘please, please, continue’
(43) no / scusa // chiedo + ma / siccome / queste due vertenze ‘un sono <quelle esaminate
oggi> (C-Oral-Rom, inatbuo2 – from Ghezzi & Molinelli 2014: 79)
‘no, excuse me, I ask, but since these two lawsuits are not the ones we examined
today’

Both within and across the two languages, however, the forms differ in the degree to
which their context-level uses become independent of the content-level uses. Thus, Latin
QUAESO exhibits a more advanced level of pragmaticalization than ROGO as measured by the
frequency with which it occurs without a direct object, i.e. as a syntactically independent
form, and in parenthetical positions within its host clause. Indeed, Ghezzi & Molinelli (2014:
74) note that QUAESO is used almost exclusively as a politeness marker. All uses of the form
decline over time, and by Late Latin it has disappeared, leaving only ROGO.
In Italian, while neither prego nor chiedo has (as yet) become confined to the context-
level to quite the same extent as QUAESO, prego starts its journey towards the status of
politeness marker prior to chiedo, whose use at the context-level appears to become
entrenched only in the 20th century, and which, prior to the present era, is relatively
infrequent in Ghezzi & Molinelli’s data even as a speech act verb. As a politeness marker,
prego is also further along the cline of “pragmaticalization” in contemporary Italian, being
able to constitute a turn on its own, but unable to take adverbial modification, whereas chiedo
exhibits the opposite pattern.
Thus, there seem to be eight stages to this onomasiological cycle, which display some
overlap within each language, as illustrated in Figure 3:

15
Figure 3: From speech act verb to politeness marker: Latin QUAESO/ROGO and Italian
prego/chiedo

QUAESO as a speech act verb

ROGO as a speech act verb

QUAESO as a politeness marker

ROGO as a politeness marker
Prego as a speech act verb
Chiedo as a speech act verb

Prego as a politeness marker

Chiedo as a politeness marker

4 Conclusions and future prospects

To summarize, the case studies analyzed in section 3 show that, similarly to
morphosyntactic changes, semantic/pragmatic changes can take place in a quasi-cyclic
fashion and that this kind of cyclicity in language change can be observed to have taken place
across several languages belonging to the Romance family.
Moreover, the case studies suggest that semantic/pragmatic cyclicity comes in two
basic forms, corresponding to the two fundamental perspectives that can be taken on the
study of linguistic meaning. One perspective is semasiology, which takes its point of
departure in a specific linguistic form or forms, i.e. in the entity that Structuralist semiology
identifies as the signifiant (Saussure 1972[1916]: 99) and Pragmatist semiotics as the
“representamen” (Peirce 1931-35: CP2.228). Semasiological cyclicity was illustrated in
sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2, respectively, by the evolution in Latin and French of the particles
IAM > ja > déjà, and by that of Latin PER HOC > Catalan però and per (ai)xò.
The opposite perspective is onomasiology, which starts from the meanings expressed,
i.e. from the Structuralist signifié (Saussure 1972[1916]: 99) or Pragmatist
“object”/”interpretant” (Peirce 1931-35: CP2.228). As examples of onomasiological cyclicity
in Romance, I adduced, in sections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2, the evolution of Latin NUNC and French
or/maintenant, as well as that of the Latin and Italian speech act verbs ROGO/QUAESO and
chiedo/prego.
The semantic/pragmatic cycles adduced in this paper have been shown to resemble
morphosyntactic cycles (cf. section 2), in as much as the evolutions in question are in several
cases ultimately more like spirals than cycles in the strict sense. Thus, in each case,
semantic/pragmatic renewal results in patterns of usage which are similar (albeit not identical)
to those of the items that are being renewed.
The discovery of quasi-cyclic patterns of change at the semantic/pragmatic level is
relevant to the use of the so-called Uniformitarian Principle to the diachronic study of
meaning change, where, prima facie, its applicability might appear problematic (Taavitsainen

16
& Jucker 2008). As it applies to linguistic change, this principle states that the same
processes that can be observed to underpin and explain currently ongoing or recent instances
of change can be used to explain changes that took place in the distant past as well (cf. Labov
1994: 21). In the realm of phonology, for instance, the Uniformitarian assumption seems
straightforward, in as much as the human vocal apparatus has remained the same since we
acquired the faculty of speech. At the level of meaning, however, things are less clear. It
may be safe to assume that human beings of past eras had basic cognitive abilities similar to
ours. Nevertheless, not only do concepts and ways of perceiving the world evolve, and by
implication differ, from one historical epoch to another, but inventories of speech acts and
speech events, norms of politeness, principles of text structuring, and conversational routines
have been shown not to be constant across time. For these reasons, we cannot take for
granted that the patterns of inferencing that operated in the past were similar to those that are
operative in contemporary meaning changes.
The existence of semantic/pragmatic cycles, however, provides some degree of support
for the usefulness of the Uniformitarian Principle to historical semantics and pragmatics
research. The similarities observed among the extended meanings of similar source items
across different time periods strongly suggest that when used in communication, linguistic
items or constructions that are similar in meaning and function do lend themselves to similar
kinds of inferences across socio-historical contexts.
This is further supported by the fact that source items with similar meanings also
frequently give rise to similar semantic/functional extensions in different languages, at
different historical stages. Thus, for instance, inchoative phasal adverbs in some non-
Romance languages, for instance English already and German schon, have developed
context-level functions that overlap significantly with those of IAM, ja, and déjà (e.g. König
1977), although there is no etymological link between the Romance and the Germanic items,
or even between the two Germanic items themselves. Similarly, in many cases, the extended
uses of NUNC, or and maintenant, for instance, are readily translatable by English now.
Cultural and contextual variation may then explain why inferences from semantically
similar source items, and the meaning extensions that arise from them, are not necessarily
completely identical. Thus, for instance, the fact that the “assertive” use of ja in Medieval
French is considerably more frequent than the analogous use of IAM in Latin, on the one hand,
and on the other, the fact that Modern French déjà can, at best, mark assertion only indirectly,
may be attributable to the fact that, as Marchello-Nizia (1985) has shown, there is generally,
in Medieval French texts, a strong emphasis not just on speaking the truth, but also on
demonstrating to one’s interlocutors than one is doing precisely that. This feature is linked to
the particular religious context of the period, which has no equivalent in either Latin or
Modern French.

4.1 Issues for future research

Because the discovery of semantic/pragmatic cyclicity as a separate phenomenon in
language change is a recent one, the nature of this paper has necessarily been to some extent
programmatic and exploratory. It is not yet known how widespread this kind of cyclicity is
across languages, nor what its overall importance is within any one language or language
family. Indeed, the case studies discussed above cannot, in and of themselves, demonstrate

17
that semantic/pragmatic cyclicity is found outside the Romance language family. More
research is needed to show whether that is so, although a recent study by Zakowski (fc)
suggests that at least one instance of onomasiological cyclicity is identifiable in Ancient
Greek.
More research will also be needed in order to determine the relative importance of
semasiological vs onomasiological cyclicity. We would evidently expect the latter to be more
frequent. This expectation follows logically from the fact that it is a requirement for a series
of semantic/pragmatic developments to be identified as cyclic that the source
meanings/functions are broadly the same at each stage. In other words, similarity of
meanings is a prerequisite for both semasiological and onomasiological cyclicity, but formal
similarity is in addition a prerequisite for the former. Thus, semasiological cycles must, in
fact, constitute not a counterpart, but a subset of onomasiological cycles. What needs to be
investigated, however, is how large that subset might be.
The existence pf semantic/pragmatic cyclicity raises the further question of whether
chain shifts are involved, i.e. whether and to what extent the changes observed at each stage
are directly linked to one another, as they are generally assumed to be in the case of
grammaticalization cycles (cf. section 2 above). In a so-called push chain, an item or
construction A shifts into the functional space of item/construction B, eventually pushing B
out of that space. Conversely, in a drag chain, A shifts out of its erstwhile functional space,
leaving a gap which is subsequently filled by B (Martinet 1952: 11). There is some reason to
believe that we may, for instance, in the case of ja > déjà (cf. section 3.1.1 above), be dealing
with a drag chain, whereas in the case of or > maintenant (cf. section 3.2.1), we may have a
push chain.
As argued in Hansen (2014: 163), one reason why ja disappeared from the French
language may be that the form came to be perceived as too functionally vague. The earliest
attestations of déjà go back to the second half of the 13th c., by which time context-level uses
of ja were well-established. However, Hansen (2014: 159) notes that in a great many
instances, the meaning contribution of Old French ja cannot be confidently attributed to
either the content- or the context-level, as more than one interpretation is compatible with its
contexts of occurrence. As noted in section 3.1.1 above, however, Old French déjà
invariably has content-level temporal-aspectual functions. Because content-level functions
are more basic than context-level functions, the creation of the new marker déjà from the
univerbation of the temporal preposition dès (‘as of’) + ja may have been prompted by a
desire to be able to mark the content-level meaning of ja univocally. In other words, the
functional extension of ja into context-level space may plausibly have dragged a new marker,
déjà, into its original content-level space. And it was only once ja dropped out, leaving a gap
at the context level as well, altogether that déjà proceeded to extend its uses on to that level.
Conversely, in the case of or > maintenant, the evidence suggests that or was pushed
out of its content-level space by the development of maintenant from an originally anaphoric
temporal adverb to a deictic temporal adverb, and that as maintenant has extended its
functions onto the context level, so or has gradually become increasingly confined not just to
formal registers, but specifically to the argumentational genre, where maintenant is not
normally used.

18
 It thus becomes a topic for further research on semantic/pragmatic cycles to determine
whether, in individual cases, we are dealing with chain shifts, and if so, of which type, and
whether one or the other of the two types of chains might be predominant in
semantic/pragmatic cyclicity. That said, determining with any degree of accuracy which type
of chain is instantiated by a given cycle requires very detailed study of the textual evidence,
and may not be feasible in all cases.
An additional issue for further research is the ultimate origin of cyclic changes in
language more generally. Given that semantic/pragmatic cycles as an empirical phenomenon
seems to exist separately from grammaticalization cycles of the kind discussed in section 2
above, and given that, as we saw in that section, specific instances of generalized
morphosyntactic cycles have in a number of cases been shown to crucially involve
pragmatics as a trigger, the possibility is raised that communicative pressures, i.e pragmatics,
may in most, or perhaps all, cases be the ultimate cause of cyclic change of any kind, and that
other kinds of cyclic change may turn out to be subtypes of semantic/pragmatic cycles.
Finally, future research will want to investigate whether there are subtypes of
semantic/pragmatic cycles that seem to occur with particular frequency across languages.
For instance, are temporal/aspectual markers across languages especially prone to acquiring
similar types of context-level uses over and over again? Do directive speech act verbs tend to
evolve into politeness markers, etc.? If so, how may that be explained?

19
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