The emergence of a new quotative constitutes a syntactic innovation
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Peer-reviewed literature demonstrates that the grammaticalization and development of new quotatives involve changes in syntactic independence and functions, thereby constituting a syntactic innovation.
... quotative. Through quantitative variationist analysis, they illustrate that the intensifier all is not a morphological innovation, but instead operates within a wider range of syntactic ... New Zealanders employ quotatives. These ...
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Abstract
This chapter describes the development of the quotative construction in Babylonian (with enma!umma), which can serve as a ‘model textbook example’ of a process of grammaticalization. The construction started in the earliest period as a whole independent clause, which meant roughly ‘(this is what) X said’. In the following two thousand years, this construction followed a long path of reduction. Slowly but very surely, it underwent all the prototypical changes associated with grammaticalization: the independent clause was gradually reduced in phonetic form, in meaning, and in syntactic independence, to become a quotative marker, and finally to emerge as a general complementizer. The first five sections of this chapter follow the process of grammaticalization of the umma construction from Old Akkadian to Neo-Babylonian. The final section of the chapter explores the cross-linguistic implications of the grammaticalization of umma. The historical development of the umma construction is illuminating because its long attested history offers a stark contrast to most reported instances of the grammaticalization of quotatives, in which the develop-ment has to be reconstructed on the basis of synchronic evidence.22 The history of umma brings to light various intricacies of the grammaticalization process, which are lost when only synchronic evidence is available. The historical perspective also puts in context all the aspects in the behaviour of the construction which may appear irregular and unmotivated from a synchronic perspective.
The word "like" has acquired some newly grammaticalized uses, notably those of a discourse marker and a quotative complementizer. Although these uses have been highly stigmatized by normativist grammarians, they nevertheless occur with high frequency in naturally-occurring discourse and have attracted the attention of several studies. This article tests the claims made in the literature about the use of "like" by looking at a small sample of talk-in-interaction. It undertakes a qualitative evaluation of pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic aspects in the use of "like" in its new functions and gi
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