Topological degrammation consists in processes by which grammatically significant word order differences are abandoned. As an example, we shall discuss the develop-ment of Danish anaphoric pronouns, an instance of weak cliticisation. (We return to clitics in Section 6, as part of our examples of complex paradigms).
The term ‘weak cliticisation’ refers to the fact that linguistic items may depend prosodically on some other item in a clause without losing their topological func-tions in the clause. An interesting example is found in Danish anaphoric personal
Chapter 2. Topology (word order) 59
pronouns and pronominal adverbs. This phenomenon is known in generative grammar as object shift (Holmberg & Platzack 1995; Vikner 1995; Bjerre, Engels, Jørgensen & Vikner 2008), although the rules involved probably never applied to objects alone, neither in the old language nor in Modern Danish. Instances are (27a) and (28), stress reduction is indicated by subscript ‘o’, as in ohende ‘her’, odet
‘it’, ‘that’.
(27) a. Han fortalte ohende odet aldrig he told her it never ‘He never told her’
b. Han har aldrig fortalt ohende odet he has never told her it ‘He has never told her’
(28) Hun boede oder ikke she lived there not ‘She didn’t live there’
Pronouns and pronominal adverbs with stress reduction are contiguous to their gov-erning verb, meaning that they precede negation only if their govgov-erning verb does, cf.
(27ab, 28). They respect illocutionary rules, that is, they respect the positional rules for the illocutionary subject, and they can fill in the initial position to produce a declara-tive word order pattern. So we have (29a) and not (29b):
(29) a. Fortalte Peter ohende odet aldrig?
told Peter her it never ‘Did Peter never tell her?’
b. *fortalte ohende odet Peter aldrig told her it Peter never
And the unstressed pronoun has a full function in the initial position, parallel to constituents with a full stress.
(30) a. Forstod du odet ikke selv?
understood you it not yourself?
‘Didn’t you understand it yourself?’
b. Nej, odet forstod jeg ikke selv no it understood I not myself ‘No, I didn’t understand it myself’
Unlike English, Danish allows anaphoric unstressed pronouns in the intital position.
Examples (30ab) have been deliberately formed with a focus constituent (selv ‘myself, yourself’ etc.) different from the anaphoric pronoun to prevent focus readings of the pronoun.
60 Connecting Grammaticalisation
We would find it a plausible solution to say that these anaphoric pronouns cliticise in the weak sense not to their governing verb but to the predicational nexus. Enclitic:
(31) F V Enclitic
[han fortalte] ohende odet
he told her it
F V V Enclitic
[han [har fortalt]] ohende odet he has told her it
F V S Enclitic
- [forstod du] odet?
understood you it?
and proclitic to bring the pronoun in the first position:
(32) F = proclitic V S odet [ forstod jeg] ikke
it understood I not ‘I didn't understand it’
We shall not make a major point out of this last part of the analysis, since the gram-matical nexus is not a concept in fashion in leading gramgram-matical schools and theories.
The point that the anaphoric objects and pronominal adverbs serve as topological con-stituents in their own right will hold, whatever basic truths and grammatical axioms one assumes.
As seen from our stance, to a large extent this is a degrammation process. In the Middle Ages, placing the anaphoric pronouns to the left of the negation was part of a wider system of iconic information structure. NPs and adverbials could generally pre-cede or follow the position for negation. If they prepre-ceded the negation, they were shel-tered from its scope and hence marked as background or non-focused constituents.
Anaphoric pronouns would automatically background, unless stressed. But it should be notes that the rule was more general than the modern rules, since background posi-tion and focus was possible for complex NPs and complex adverbials as well. At this stage Old Scandinavian had no specific position for the subject, which could occur in background, focus and neutral position, as expected, with background as the most frequent position.
The topology of the middle field is shown in (33)–(35):
(33) at han giorthe bonda-num æy mera schatha i thy af hoggi.
that he did owner-def.dat not more damage in this cut ‘that he did not cause more damage to the owner in this cut’
(Scanic Law 122. GL 25, 22–23)
Chapter 2. Topology (word order) 61
(34) tha ma han halfw-an gifwa clostr-e ællær hwem sum the may he half-acc give monastery-dat or who.dat that han wil oc eig mera…
he will and not more…
‘ then he may give half (of his fortune) to a monastery or to whom he will,
and no more…’ (Scanic Law 37. DgL I.1, 211)
(35) = (7)
thy lat giøra vppe i tornit et hemelikt hws…
therefore let-imp.sg make up in the tower a secret room…
i hwilko som wi magh-om hemeliga blifva in which that we can-1pl secretly stay
‘ Therefore have a secret room made up in the tower in which we can dwell in secret’
(36) F V background Neg focus V neutral
positions
(at) han giorthe bondanum æy mera scatha i thy af hoggi
tha ma han halfwan gifua clostre
(som) wi maghom hemeliga blifva
The reanalysis to modern Danish is illustrated in Table 4:
Table 4. Topological reanalysis of background positions.
Middle Danish:
X V background
positions Neg focus
positions V neutral positions
↓ Modern Danish:
X V S unstressed
pronouns Neg focus*)
positions V neutral positions
*The focus position in the modern language contains free adverbials only, see Chapter 6, Section 3.7
In the modern language, the background positions have developed into the fixed positions for the subject (the background constituent par excellence), and the positions for pronouns with stress reduction. Full valency constituents (objects and PPs) are all in the neutral positions in modern Danish.
The positions for unstressed pronouns in main declarative clauses are what is left of the former iconic word order system that marked the informative status of
62 Connecting Grammaticalisation
phrases. The particular part of the change that concerns the stress reduced pronouns is a degrammation process, not because it reduces the semantic importance and function of the positions, but because it dismantles former grammatical paradigms.
The background vs. focus distinction of the medieval paradigm is gone. The modern unstressed pronouns are background elements in terms of their expression, and their clitic positions cannot be shown to have any independent function in the modern language similar to the old system. Rather, the change of content involved is a change to indexical meaning (Andersen 1980); the positions point to what is already there in the pronominal stems and thus add nothing extra.
This process could also be classified as a regrammation process, since the expres-sion remnants of the background positions are still identifiable and obviously have been ascribed new grammatical functions. But this new grammatical function seems to be one of expression regulation and redundancy alone, and our point in speaking of degrammation here is precisely the loss of paradigmatic structure.
In a wider sense of degrammation, we would expect the total erasing of the specifically clitic positions. Such a process is also documented in the history of the Danish language, namely in southern insular and some south Jutland dialects. In these dialects, unstressed pronouns are treated along with ordinary full objects and adverbs, and clitic positions no longer exist.
(37) I sådan et stormvejr der hitter I aldrig oden In such a gale there find you never it ‘In a gale like this, you’ll never find it’
KMP Langeland (Standard: der finder I den aldrig) (38) Og så lige pludselig, så står han jo også oder.
And then all of a sudden, then stand he part also there ‘And then all of a sudden, he was standing there, for sure, too’
KMP Lollandsk (Standard: så står han der jo også) (39) Jeg misundte ikke oham odet
I envied not him it ‘I didn’t envy him for that’
KMP Langeland (Standard: jeg misundte ham det ikke) To sum up: if grammation was seen solely as a cline, the development of the clitic pronouns would misleadingly count as an instance of increasing grammation. The point here is that although the unstressed pronouns still take part in the illocution-ary word order system, in the present language the former background positions have lost their status as part of an information structural word order paradigm:
background, focus and neutral positions. From the point of view of the paradigm theory of grammaticalisation, the development of the Danish clitic pronouns is a
Chapter 2. Topology (word order) 63
clear instance of degrammation, since what is preserved in the modern standard lan-guage is part of the former expression system functioning as a redundant indexical co-system, all at the level of expression: position pointing to unstressed pronoun, an extra formal indication of the function of the unstressed anaphoric pronouns per se.
6. Examples of topological oppositions integrated