Adversativkonnektoren in den nordgermanischen Sprachen: Synchronie und Diachronie by Kristina Kotcheva (review)

Kristina Kotcheva’s monograph treats adversative conjunctions (also called “connectives”) in the North Germanic languages, providing both a cross-linguistic, typological analysis of this functional category in the modern varieties, as well as a diachronic study of the same, from 800 CE up to the present. Following Haspelmath’s semantic mapping as outlined in his 2003 chapter, “The Geometry of Grammatical Meaning: Semantic Maps and Cross-Linguistic Comparison,” Kotcheva provides a descriptive overview of the function of the reflexes of inherited Germanic *ut(a) (North Germanic utan/uden, English but) and *inþi, *anþi (North Germanic en, English and), and the Middle Low German loan men. Historical analysis of various text types from the last 1200 years provides insight into the adverbial origin of utan and en, and the author provides grammaticalization schemata for both, following Traugott’s “On the Origins of ‘And’ and ‘But’ Connectives in English,” which appeared in volume 10 of Studies in Language, in 1986. Subsequent borrowing of men lead to competition with indigenous en and utan, resulting in the restriction of the inherited lexemes to smaller semantic domains. Concomitantly, the change in semantic domain of men also followed a similar path of grammaticalization, though this process is progressed to different degrees in each of the modern Scandinavian languages. Contemporary variation with respect to the use of adversative conjunctions is thus accounted for by the relative degree of grammaticalization of each of these three lexemes and the resulting shift in the semantic domains that they cover.

The monograph begins with an introduction to the methods and databases/corpora employed (pp. 15–16), followed by an overview of adversative constructions (adversative Konstruktionen) in Chapter 2 (pp. 21–39), including references to both their semantic and contextual meaning, as well as their syntactic characteristics and restrictions. Illustrative examples here are drawn primarily from German and English—presumably for a German- and English-proficient audience—though Swedish, Danish, Bulgarian and Polish examples are also given. Chapter 3 (“Adversative Konnektoren und Diskursstrukturierung,” pp. 41–46) concerns continuous and discontinuous marking in an utterance, which, based on context and the expectations of the listener, can convey meaning not otherwise overtly marked grammatically. For example, the sentence “Anna traf Hanna, trank einen Espresso, und ging nach Hause” (Anna met Hanna, drank an espresso and went home; p. 43) implies a chronology from context, irrespective of the fact that all verbs similarly appear in the simple past; null subject realization is possible only under the pretext that Anna—and not Hanna—is the grammatical subject. Conversely, a switch in reference creates discontinuity and higher processing cost, which requires additional overt elements—for example, repetition of a subject—to reduce the cognitive burden in counter-expectational utterances. This chapter provides evidence that semantic and conversational context interact with syntactic structure, and even with the selection of functional lexemes. Finally, the chapter ends with two discreet paths for grammaticalization, whereby discourse markers become contrastive markers, and vice versa.

Following the preliminary chapters, Chapters 4 through 10 focus on the synchronic analysis of the modern North Germanic languages. Chapter 4 (“Synchronie: Daten,” pp. 47–48) gives an overview of the reference works and digital text corpora employed, which include a comprehensive list of not only standard languages but also references to nonstandard European varieties. Chapters 5 through 9 provide a descriptive overview of the inventory and semantic range of adversative conjunctions in Swedish (pp. 49–58), Danish (pp. 59–66), Norwegian (pp. 67–74), Icelandic (pp. 75–84), and Faroese (pp. 85–93). Comparison between adversative conjunctions in these languages is summarized in Chapter 10 (“Synchronie: Fazit,” pp. 95–104), which includes also cross-linguistic evidence of similar phenomena in distantly related Indo-European and even non-IE languages. The chapter concludes with supporting arguments for the use of semantic maps for the study of adversative conjunctions; it also includes Kotcheva’s adapted model, based on previous scholarship...