The subjective use of postural verb in Afrikaans (I): evolution from progressive to modal

A general linguistic use of progressive aspect is to express some kind of subjective meaning. In other words, this aspectual construction is applied to postulate the speaker’s attitude towards or emotional involvement with a particular situation. Although this practice occurs in all three Afrikaans progressive constructions, it is clear that the postural progressive in Afrikaans in particular became specialised with respect to subjective expression. The CPV1 en construction is even used in constructions that cannot be interpreted as progressive situations (for example, stative or anterior situation types), and furthermore this construction collocates significantly strongly with negative communication verbs (verbs like skinder ‘gossip’, kla ‘complain’ and pla ‘bother’). The subjective use of progressive constructions in Afrikaans has not received much attention to date. In two complementary articles (this article and The subjective use of postural verbs in Afrikaans (II): a corpus analysis of CPV en in Zefrikaans) the development and use of the CPV en as a subjective or interpretative construction, are investigated. Based on a relevant literature review, the purpose of this article is to propose a development route for the evolution of the subjective CPV en construction; and to highlight some typical characteristics of the subjective CPV en construction, on the basis of a pilot corpus study. The modal CPV en construction develops in five phases. During the first two phases, the postural verb is used to express the physical or spatial orientation of the subject. During the third and fourth phases, the postural verb develops into an aspectual auxiliary verb. It is only in the fourth phase that the progressive construction is used in modal contexts. In the last, fifth phase, the progressive meaning of the CPV en construction fades completely and it evolves into a pure modal construction. The subjective CPV en construction is characterised by two typical characteristics: firstly, the construction is mostly used in negative contexts (such as insult, blame, self-reproach or judgement) and secondly, it is mainly used in informal or spoken language. It does not appear frequently in a corpus of written Standard Afrikaans.Keywords: cardinal postural verb, CPV, postural, progressive, modal use, subjectiv

The subjective use of postural verbs in Afrikaans (II): a corpus analysis of CPV en in Zefrikaans

A general linguistic use of progressive aspect is to express some kind of subjective meaning. In other words, this aspectual construction is applied to postulate the speaker’s attitude towards or emotional involvement with a particular situation. Although this practice occurs in all three Afrikaans progressive constructions, it is clear that the postural progressive in Afrikaans in particular became specialised with respect to subjective expression. The CPV 1en construction is even used in contexts where its meaning cannot be interpreted as progressive (for example, stative or anterior situation types), and furthermore this construction collocates significantly strongly with negative communication verbs (verbs like skinder ‘gossip’, kla ‘complain’ and pla ‘bother’. The subjective use of progressive constructions in Afrikaans has not received much attention to date. In two complementary articles (this article and The subjective use of postural verb in Afrikaans (I): evolution from progressive to modal) the development and use of the CPV en as subjective or interpretative construction, are investigated. The purpose of this second article is to conduct a corpus investigation in a corpus that is appropriate for optimally examining the subjective use of the CPV en construction potential, namely a recent Afrikaans corpus characterised by non-standard, informal, spoken or conversational language. The Watkykjy.co.za Corpus 1.0 (2015), as a corpus of “Zefrikaans” is examined for this purpose. Whereas the first article focused on the development of the postular construction to express subjective or modal meaning, the purpose of this article is to investigate the use of the subjective CPV en. From a grammaticalisation perspective, it is indicated that the different frequency relations are a first strong indication that CPV en has been further grammaticalised in Zefrikaans than in Standard Afrikaans, and that the modal and subjective use of the construction is therefore probably also applied more productively in Zefrikaans. Secondly, a collexeme analysis is done of the main verbs that collocate with CPV en and it is found that the Zefrikaans construction, similar to the manner in which it is used in Standard Afrikaans, collocates significantly strongly with seven verb categories, namely with verbs i) social interaction; ii) creative activity; iii) perception; iv) cognitive activity; v) biology; vi) inactivity; and vii) negative communication. In the Zefrikaans collocation list, however, there are many words with a strong modal or interpretive undertone, that are non-standard or informal, or can even be regarded as vulgar, crude and inappropriate. The results of the corpus investigation confirmed that the CPV en construction mainly occurs in non-standard, informal, spoken or “conversational” Afrikaans.Keywords: cardinal postural verb, CPV, grammaticalisation, postural, progressive, modal use, subjective, Zefrikaan

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Redakteursbrief: Festschrift vir Wannie Carstens

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Human impersonal pronouns in West Germanic:A questionnaire-based comparative study of Afrikaans, Dutch and English

In this article, we examine and compare the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans, Dutch and English. The second person singular, the third person plural and the ‘man’- and ‘one’-pronouns are studied by means of an acceptability judgment questionnaire and a completion questionnaire. The combination of the two methods reveals interesting descriptive facts about the three West Germanic languages. They include, among other things, the ‘man’-prominence of Afrikaans versus the ‘you’-prominence of Dutch and English for expressing the universal meaning ‘anyone’ and the more prominent position of ‘they’ in Dutch than in the other languages for conveying the existential meaning ‘someone, some people’. Our findings have a number of more theoretical implications too. The two existing semantic maps for human impersonal pronouns make different distinctions in the existential domain, based on type/level of (un)knownness on the one hand and number on the other. Our study tests both sets of distinctions and shows that the two dimensions interact with each other in Afrikaans, Dutch and English. The results thus support a recent proposal in the literature for a combined semantic map. The data from the completion questionnaire, finally, also indicates that existential uses prefer alternative forms of impersonalization to human impersonal pronouns in all three languages

Menslike onpersoonlike voornaamwoorde in Nederlands vanuit 'n dubbelvraelysaanpak – 'n vergelyking met Afrikaans

This article investigates the human impersonal pronouns (HIPs) in Dutch by using a double questionnaire-based approach. It involves two different questionnaires, which firstly measures the acceptability of the different HIPs in the twelve possible impersonal contexts, and secondly, determines the preferred impersonal strategy in these same contexts. For this purpose, the study involves two different questionnaires, namely an acceptability questionnaire (AQ) and a completion task (VT). The results are interpreted in two ways: Firstly, a language-specific comparison is made between the results of the Dutch AQ and CT. Secondly, the Dutch results are compared to the results of a similar investigation into the Afrikaans HIPs. There is a correlation between the acceptability (from the AQ) and use (from the CT) of 'je' and 'ze' in universal-internal and non-internal uses respectively. However, there is little correlation between the acceptability of 'men' and the actual usage of this pronoun. The use of 'men' is considered acceptable in all twelve contexts, but the actual frequency of use is very low in all of the contexts. 'Ze' (Du) is used more frequently than 'hulle' (Afr), and 'ze' is more acceptable than 'hulle' in number-neutral existential contexts. Unlike 'men' (Du), which can be used in all twelve contexts, '('n) mens' (Afr) can only be used in internal-universal contexts. 'je' (Du) and 'jy' (Afr) are both acceptable and frequently used in internal-universal contexts

Human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans:A double questionnaire-based study

This paper is the first in-depth study of the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans: jy ‘you’, (’n) mens ‘(a) human’ and hulle ‘they’. It adopts a double questionnaire approach, consisting of an acceptability judgment task for one group of participants and a completion task for another group. On the theoretical side, we test the different dimensions proposed in two of the most recent semantic maps of human impersonal pronouns. The first map features vague, inferred and specific existential uses, which vary in the kind/degree of (un-)knownness. The second one distinguishes existential contexts that only allow a plural interpretation from existential contexts that are neutral with respect to number. The results of our questionnaires indicate not only that the dimensions of number and (un)knownness involve gradual instead of categorical distinctions but also that they interact with one another, with decreasing acceptability and usage of hulle along both of them. More generally, the completion task data suggest that human impersonal pronouns are not the preferred strategy for impersonalization in existential contexts anyway. On the descriptive side, we show that Afrikaans has a division of labor between (’n) mens and jy on the one hand and hulle on the other. The former are restricted to universal-internal uses, the latter to universal-external, speech act verb and existential ones. The data also reveal that speakers may consider the less grammaticalized form ’n mens more acceptable but that they tend to employ more grammaticalized mens. It thus attests to the usefulness of combining the two types of questionnaire

A corpus-based study of the human impersonal pronoun "('n) mens" in Afrikaans:Compared to "men" and "een mens" in Dutch

This article compares the grammaticalizing human impersonal pronoun ('n) mens in Afrikaans to fully grammaticalized men and non-grammaticalized een mens in Dutch. It is shown that 'n mens and een mens can still be used lexically, unlike mens and men, and that ('n) mens and een mens are restricted to non-referential indefinite, universal-internal uses while men exhibits the whole range of (non-) referential indefinite ones. Despite the latter’s presence in the earliest Afrikaans data, it is argued not to have influenced the development of ('n) mens. This pronoun and Dutch een mens are also found to have syntactic functions other than subjecthood, unlike men. The contrast is attributed to their different degrees of grammaticalization. Lastly, the Afrikaans ‘man’-pronoun is shown to differ from its Dutch counterparts in relying on the second person singular for suppletion, though forms of ('n) mens are found to occasionally occur instead

Afrikaans as Standaard Gemiddelde Europees:Wanneer ‘n lid uit sy taalarea beweeg

A recent trend in the study of Standard Average European is the extraterritorial perspective of examining the extent to which non-European languages have converged with this Sprachbund as a result of contact with one or more of its members. The present article complements this line of research in that it investigates the extent to which a European language has diverged from Standard Average European after leaving the linguistic area. The focus is on Dutch, a nuclear member of the Sprachbund, and Afrikaans, its colonial offshoot. The two languages are compared with respect to twelve of the most distinctive linguistic features of Standard Average European. Afrikaans is found to share ten of them with Dutch, including anticausative prominence and formally distinguished intensifiers and reflexives, and could therefore still be considered a core member of the Sprachbund, despite deviations in the expression of negative pronouns and the grammaticality of external possessor constructions. This relatively low degree of divergence may be attributed to the continuity from Settler Dutch to at least the variety of Afrikaans on which the standard language is based and to the important role that Dutch continued to play in the history of Afrikaans

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