Semantic change and language contact: the case of Old Czech

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Semantic change and language contact:

the case of Old Czech

Igor Yanovich

based on joint empirical work with Yuliya Mkhayan and Philip Reiber

DFG Emmy Noether research group “Modal systems in historical Slavic”

DFG Center for Advanced Study “Words, Bones, Genes, Tools”

Universität Tübingen

FoDS 4 @ Ohio State University November 15, 2019

Semantic change and language contact:the case of Old Czech 1 / 37

The empirical scope: (semantic) modals in Old Czech

Early written West Slavic:

Old Czech (first Czech Bible in the mid-13th, long original texts from the early 14th), Old Polish (slightly later)

Modals to look at today:chtietifrom lexical ‘want’,jmietifrom lexical ‘have’,musitifrom Germanmüssen

The three-fold message

1 The importance of contact

Contact is the norm in semantic change, not an exception.

2 The complexity of our data

Maybe we need more texts to get a better picture.

Or maybe there are more local shifts and fluctuations than usually thought.

3 The need for alternatives to standard Kratzerian modal semantics Standard semantic accounts have rationales behind them.

It may be fruitful to return to those rationales and re-evaluate.

The importance of contact

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Borrowing... grammar?

A common misconception

“Grammatical elements cannot, or almost cannot, be borrowed”

Wrong even for derivational and inflectional morphology see a recent overview in [Gardani et al., 2015]

Borrowing of forms: conjunctions,only, complementizers,modals...

Borrowing of patterns: perhaps even more widespread

Quick entry into the literature: [Aikhenvald, 2006], [Matras, 2009]

Tense-aspect systems in Europe

from [Thieroff, 2000]

Overlap between epistemic and root modality

from [van der Auwera and Ammann, 2013]

Slavic (and neighbors’) innovative future markers

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Borrowing modals

Borrowing of forms:

Russiannado‘need’⇒Evenkina:da [Grenoble, 2000]

Persianb ˙a:yad‘have to’⇒Iranian Azerib ˙a:yad [Kıral, 2005]

Norsemunu⇒Northern Middle Englishmun [Eitelmann, 2013] a.o.

Borrowing of patterns:

GET-based modality in the Circumbaltic area, in South-East Asia [Enfield, 2003], [Kehayov and Torn, 2005], [van der Auwera et al., 2009], [Yanovich, 2016b]

What we know and don’t know about borrowing modals

Modal borrowing hierarchy of [Matras, 2007]

deontic necessity>circ. necessity>circ. possibility>ability [Elšik and Matras, 2006]: over 70 Romani dialects in contact with two dozens different European languages

[Matras and Sakel, 2007]: 30 languages under contact from around the world (Katanga Swahili, northern Kurdish, Indonesian...)

Problems and open questions for the hierarchy presupposes that modals have only one meaning

we don’t know how ambiguous modals get borrowed (cf. Evenkina:da) is based on synchronic descriptions

doesn’t tell us anything about pattern borrowing

Further complications

Changes in modal meanings

ability need

circumstantial deontic epistemic

[Bybee et al., 1994], [van der Auwera and Plungian, 1998], and subsequent literature

meanings ofcantoday≈meanings ofmayin the 14th century corpus evidence about the 14th century: [Gotti et al., 2002]

⇒work with primary historical texts is indispensable

Some Old Czech modals:chtieti,jmieti,musiti

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chtieti < ‘want’, jmieti < ‘have’, musiti < müssen

chtieti<lexical ‘want’

is not a future marker in Modern Czech

grammaticalizes into a future marker in other Slavic (Bulgarian, BCS...), Romanian, Greek, some Albanian dialects jmieti<lexical ‘have’

grammaticalizes into a modal and/or prospective marker cross-linguistically (have to) and within Slavic (Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian)

but also develops into a future (Bulgarian, French, Italian...) musiti<Middle High German ancestor ofmüssen(must)

borrowed into a range of Slavic (see the summary in [Hansen, 2000]) the Old Czech evidence is oldest for Slavic languages borrowingmüssen

Old Czech chtieti < ‘want’: clear future readings

Three texts from mid-14th century:Tandariuš(knightly epic), St. Prokop(saint’s live, simple language),St. Kateřina(saint’s live, elaborate language and verse)

chtieti: ‘desire’; possibly ‘intention’; ‘future’; often ambiguous But all three texts feature some clear future examples:

(1) St. Kateřinaline 251

"Která which

chce chtieti.pres.3sg

býti be.inf

okaza?"

showing.off

‘What kind of showing off will there be?’

(2) Tandariušline 1531 A and

když when

chtieš(e) chtieti.impf.3sg

dvór gathering

třetí third

býti be.inf

‘And when the third gathering (of king Arthur’s) would happen...’

Old Czech chtieti < ‘want’

At least in absolute future contexts,chtieti+ inf competes with budu‘be.fut’ + inf

In later Czech, the future is thebudu‘be.fut’ + inf construction In my preliminary, small analysis of Jan Hus’s writing (early 15th century), I have not found clear futurechtietiso far.

⇒14th century Old Czech already had a ‘want’ future construction

⇒Unlike several South Slavic, Czech lost it later

⇒This might be a pattern better viewed areally: Czech’s neighbors also do not have ‘want’-futures, but several have ‘be’-futures

Old Czech jmieti < ‘have’

jmieti<‘have’ is important both in its own sake and because it probably pre-dates the borrowing ofmusiti: many Slavic languages have developedjmieti’s cognates into modals and/or futures In [Yanovich, 2016a], I hypothesized thatmusitiwas “grafted” onto the modal meanings that Old Czechjmietialready had.

Not unthinkable: in early Old PolishKazania Gnieźnieńskie(late 14th cent.), one of the 5 instances ofmusiećis explained by a gloss...mieć!

But very hard to verify or disprove at this point: not enough early evidence onjmieti

Dalimil (early 14th cent., a long text): apparently 0 examples Tandariuš (1808 lines): 3 examples

Sv. Prokop (1084 lines): 0 examples Sv. Kateřina (3519 lines): 6 examples

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Old Czech jmieti < ‘have’ in mid-14th century Old Czech

Out of the 9 examples I have from the mid-14th century, most seem to beprospective/future.

(3) St. Kateřinalines 1691-2:

[direct speech:] ‘Let every one of you be hearing when Ijmieti.pres.1sg start a speech directed at you.’

One isreasonably sure to be some type of deontic, though it is bad practice to base such conclusions on a single example.

(4) St. Kateřinalines 2301-5:

‘She (Catherine) wore (as the result of torture) for her beloved one (Christ) bands of six colors, as a true loverjmieti.pres.3sgfor her lover.’

Old Czech jmieti < ‘have’ in Jan Hus, 1410s

Unlike in the 14th century texts we so far analyzed, Jan Hus uses jmietifar more frequently.

Mostly as a deontic, which we will look at in more detail later. But also as some type of prospective/future marker.

Unclear why such a difference between the 14th-century texts and Hus:

semantic change?

subject-matter differences? (stories vs. direct moral instruction) different dialects?

different sociolinguistic associations / style-construction concerns?

Out of those reasons, semantic change seems to me the least likely, because of a dramatic difference in relative frequency ofjmieti.

Old Czech musiti < Middle High German

musitiin the 14th-centuryTandariuš,St. Prokop,St. Kateřina:

circumstantial;

bouletic;

possibly deontic too, but no clear examples;

possibly prospective/future, but also not clear

Bouletic: a relatively unusual flavor, described by Kratzer for German, but not prominent in Englishorin typological and grammaticalization studies (5) Tandariušlines 727-8, speech by a villain about the hero Tandariuš:

vždy anyway

toho him

musím musiti.pres.1sg

zkusiti, test

jeho his

pýchy pretenses

ukrátiti cut.short.inf

‘I definitely have to test/try this one, and cut short his pompous pretenses’

Old Czech musiti < Middle High German

musitiin Jan Hus: rare relative tojmieti; someunclear, circumstantial-or-deonticcases, but alsoclear deonticones, directly comparable to Hus’sjmieti

Summing up the state of research:

musiticlearly polysemous from early on the exact semantic range is uncertain

the bouletic use possibly innovative for Czech, as it does not seem to occur withjmieti, but not enough data

more certainly, there is a verb-less movement use calqued from German:I must to place Xmeaning “I must get to place X”; no parallel with Slavicjmieti

as withjmieti, the nature of changes in Hus vs. 14th century unclear

⇒finding out how a modal borrowing occurs turns out really hard!

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Old Czech chtieti, jmieti, musiti: a summary

chtieti<‘want’: future uses, later lost (possibly already in Hus) jmieti<‘have’: taking together the 14th century texts and the early 15th century Hus, has at least deontic and prospective/future readings, but not enough data

musiti<German: clearly polysemous; both speed-of-change considerations and verbless “movement”musitishow that different meanings were borrowed, not just a single one; but it remains unclear how exactly it happened, and what the relationship withjmietiis

Jan Hus’sjmietiand Kratzerian semantics

Deontic jmieti in Jan Hus

Empirical basis: Hus’sOn marriageand his Czech version ofSix errors.

Several dozens ofjmietiinstances, most of them deontic.

Most deonticjmietiin these texts by Huslook like run-of-the-mill necessity deontics, expressing obligation:

(6) Six errors, Ch. 4, line 1:

‘<...>some people suppose that[they]jmieti.subj.plobey their superiors<...>in everything those order, be it evil, be it good.’

(7) On marriage, lines 258-9:

‘If someone.male or someone.female enters into a marriage, they jmieti.pres.3sgkeep that; and if he marries another, he commits adultery andjmieti.pres.3sgreturn rightfully to the first one.’

Deontic jmieti in Jan Hus

But there are also instances that cannot be conveying obligation:

(8) On marriage, lines 97-8:

‘... you can learn this: whojmieti.pres.3sgtake each other in marriage, and [also]upon what marriage is based’

The rest of the work discusses at length which people are eligible for marriage — e.g., not too closely related blood relatives, not already married, etc. etc.

Consider an obligation reading:

who (x,y): have-to(x marries y)

Clearly, the intended reading (whatever it may be!) may much better be captured by renderingjmietias permission:

who (x,y): it-is-allowed(x marries y)

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Hus’s deontic jmieti Kratzer-style?

It is not hard to formulate an analysis of Hus’sjmietiusing standard Kratzerian modal semantics:

The literal deontic meaning ofjmietiis permission, or♦= existential quantifier over worlds

In most instances, it gets pragmatically strengthened to obligation.

Obvious questions arise, though:

Why isjmietialmost always pragmatically strengthened in Hus?

[Deal, 2011] has a somewhat similar analysis of a modal in Nez Perce, minus the strengthening. It works because Nez Perce lacks a dual necessity modal. But that’s not the case in Old Czech: there are necessity deontics in Hus (musitiis one of them).

An ambiguity analysis is also possible, but also not very satisfying.

Probing further into the problem

Looking at the data makes one feel that permission-with-strengthening somehow does not quite capture how Hus actually usesjmieti.

If we paraphrasejmietiwith something like “it is proper that”, both the seeming permission and the seeming obligation cases make sense:

(9) Some people suppose that it is proper for them to always obey their superiors.

(10) If they marry another [while already married], it is proper for them to return to their first spouse.

(11) You will learn for who it is proper to marry each other.

Can there be an analysis that does not posit two meanings here?

To answer that, we will first re-examine the motivations for the standard modal semantics.

Why modals as quantifiers over worlds?

Applying Kripke semantics for modal logic to natural language:

For a worldw, accessibility relationRdefines the set ofw-accessible worlds{v:wRv}

Possibility modals are existential quantifiers over that set:

λp:∃u∈ {v:wRv} ∧p(u) Necessity modals are universal quantifiers:

λp:∀u∈ {v:wRv} →p(u)

What we explain this way:

1 Modal statements capture facts about states of the world, not just the actual world.

2 Duality of modal logic holds for natural language: “it is allowed that P”

⇔“It is not required that not-P”, and is immediately captured by the semantics (assuming no empty accessible sets)

Why do we use Kratzerian semantics for modals?

WhatKratzer’s modal semanticsexplains in addition:

1 Wederiveaccessibility relations through sets of understandable propositions, e.g. sets of moral rules, religious prescriptions, laws, etc.

2 We can defineheterogeneous modals: e.g., permission from [Kratzer, 1991] is defined with circumstantial modal base and deontic ordering source. This means we first restrict attention to worlds compatible with the present circumstances. Then we check (roughly) which of those worlds agree with most rules.

3 More complex modal notionscan be defined: e.g., “at least as good a possibility as”, “better possibility”, “slight possibility”.

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What is the logic of jmieti/‘proper’ ?

Some intuitionsabout the moral notion that Hus probably uses:

everypis either proper or not proper ifpis proper, it does not follow that¬pis not proper (i.e. incompatible alternatives can both be OK)

ifpis proper andqis proper, it does not follow thatp∧qis also proper All those properties can be captured if we analyze ‘proper’/jmietias a possibility deontic.

Butthere is moreto the sense of being morally the proper thing to do:

Ifp,q, andp∧qare all proper, then somehow we feel that a world wherep∧qis not worse (and often better) than the one wherep∧ ¬q This is different from permission: if I’m allowed to take an apple, and am allowed to take a pear, it is not necessarily true that it’d beoften betterif I take both an apple and a pear!

An attempt at analysis for jmieti/‘proper’

We define a functiongoodnessfrom propositions into degrees of (moral) goodness. Goodness has the bottom element 0.

[[jmieti/‘proper⁰]] =λp:goodness(p)>0 There is a structural constraint ongoodness:

∀p,q:goodness(p)>0∧goodness(q)>0∧goodness(p∧q)>0→

→goodness(p∧q)≥goodness(p∧ ¬q)

If it is good to give a stranger directions (p) and good to be polite to other people (q), then it is definitely not worse to give directions politely (p∧q) than to give them impolitely (p∧ ¬q).

Checking the predictions of the analysis

everypis either proper or not

ifpis proper, it does not follow that¬pis not ifpandqare proper, it does not follow thatp∧qis

thanks to the structural constraint ongoodness, we capture the sense that doing more proper things cannot make things worse

(12) It is not proper to marry a second person. If one marries a second person, it is proper to return to the first spouse.

goodness(marrying a second person)=0

goodness(marrying a second person∧later returning to the first spouse)>0

if you are in the situation where you’ve married another person while already married, the imperative to increase good requires you to return to the first spouse⇒the perceived strong force

Links to classical modality

In the new analysis, the strong force ofjmietiis due to the moral imperative, not the expression’s literal meaning.

Suppose the hearer perceives a speaker meaning of a moral obligation.

They may want to disassemble that meaning into component parts.

A Kratzerian deconstruction: a universal quantifier over worlds closest to the ideal defined by a set of rules

A goodness-based deconstruction: non-zero goodness+independently assumed non-linguistic moral imperative

In Kratzerian semantics, we use understandable rules to explicate which worlds are close to the ideal

In the “goodness semantics”, we use understandable statements like “It is good thatp”, “pis better thanq”, etc. to explicate goodness

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Non-Kratzerian deontic jmieti: summing up

Using a non-conventional semantics for deonticjmietican help us to capture more intuitionsabout its meaning than a standard Kratzerian analysis.

This becomes apparent when we return to themotivationsfor using the Kratzerian semantics, and consider if our expression of interest has further properties.

Of course, a full-fledged analysis shouldexplain the relationbetween Kratzerian modals and a “goodness” modal — importantly, the reasonable diachronic pathways of change.

But there isnoa priorireasonto write down every “modal” meaning as a Kratzerian modal. This step should be argued for, not just assumed or taken for convenience.

Conclusion

When we study semantic change,language contact is always part of the picture, whether we want to look into it or not.

tense-aspect systems in Europe, epistemic-root ambiguity, European new future markers, borrowed modals...

The situation on the ground can be very complex, unfortunately.

different meaning distributions for modals in 14th-century texts vs. Hus It may be fruitful to usealternatives to Kratzerian modal semantics for some modal meanings.

jmietiin Jan Hus, similar in meaning to ‘proper’: degrees of goodness

Acknowledgements

Thank you!

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Acknowledgements

The work on Old Czech reported here is based on empirical preparatory work undertaken by Yuliya Mkhayan, Philip Reiber, and myself in the framework of the DFG Emmy Noether research group “Modal systems in historical Slavic languages”.

This work would not have been feasible if not for the enormous efforts of people creating historical corpora and digitizing historical texts. In particular, I would like to sincerely thank the members of the language history department of the Institute of the Czech language, who maintain an excellent set of digitized dictionaries and an extensive Old Czech corpus.

Many thanks to Tilman Berger, Natasha Korotkova, Anna Szabolcsi, and Barbara Tomaszewicz; to my colleagues at the “Words, Bones, Genes, Tools” research center and at the UniTübingen Institute of Prehistory, who help me to contextualize archaeological research that can bear on linguistics; and to the audience at the FDSL 2016 at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where I presented a pilot study of Old Czech modals whose conclusions had to be thoroughly updated based on new empirical work in 2018-2019.

Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the support by DFG under Emmy Noether research group “Modal systems in historical Slavic languages”, project 391377018, as well as Center for Advanced Study “Words, Bones, Genes, Tools”, project FOR 2237.

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