Bladas Oscar|| Conversational Routines, Formulaic Language and Subjectification

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Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 929--957 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Conversational routines, formulaic language and subjectification ` scar Bladas * O Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat de Filologia, Department de Filologia Catalana, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes 585, E-08007 Barcelona, Spain Received 11 May 2011; received in revised form 18 April 2012; accepted 20 April 2012

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore some of the so-called ‘‘conversational routines’’ (Coulmas, 1981) by taking into consideration the concept of subjectification as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010). The analysis of a number of Catalan ‘‘conversational routines’’ indicates that these formulaic forms undergo an increase of subjectification which, in some cases, may lead to a process of grammaticalization. It is claimed here that such an increase of subjectification seems to be a key feature which better distinguishes the vaguely defined category of ‘‘conversational routines’’ from other formulaic forms, e.g. idiomatic VPs such as to kick the bucket. These findings also suggest that subjectification may have broader effects beyond grammaticalization. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Formulaic language; Conversational routines; Subjectification; Grammaticalization

1. Introduction1 Most Catalan dictionaries devoted to phraseology do not make a clear distinction between idiomatic forms such as the verbal phrase (VP) fer campana (to play truant, lit. to make bell) and the so-called ‘‘conversational routines’’ (CRs) (Coulmas, 1981; Aijmer, 1996), e.g. bon profit (enjoy your meal, lit. bon appétit) and Ara hi corro (lit. now there-I-rush, which is defined as an ‘‘expression’’ to refuse a command or a suggestion [DSFF]). In general dictionaries (e.g. DIEC2, GDLC, GD62), idiomatic VPs and CRs are mixed and their definitions do not show the significant differences to be drawn between these two kinds of formulaic forms, as argued in this paper. In most cases CRs are simply labelled ‘‘expressions’’ and defined by means of their most wide-spread pragmatic function, normally without providing natural examples, or at most, examples produced by introspection. However, such a misleading definition of CRs is not just a matter of applied linguistics, and particularly of lexicography. More importantly, it reflects the theoretical difficulties in defining a particular kind of formulaic forms which, in spite of having received some attention from scholars in the recent years, have not been described satisfactorily yet.

The aim of this paper is to explore some pragmatic differences between CRs like Ara hi corro and idiomatic VPs like fer campana in Catalan. In particular, both idiomatic VPs and CRs will be analysed taking into account the concept of subjectification as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010) in the framework of Grammaticalization Theory. The key distinction between these two kinds of formulaic, usually idiomatic, forms proposed here is the increase of subjectivity undergone by prototypical CRs but not by idiomatic VPs. Such differences are not claimed to be clear-cut.

Rather they are seen as a continuum ranging from potentially low subjective forms, typically idiomatic VPs like fer campana, to highly subjective CRs such as the greeting formula hola.

* Tel.: +34 93 403 56 12; fax: +34 93 403 56 98.

E-mail address: o.bladas@antics.ub.edu.

1 The following are the inflection abbreviations used in this paper: COND (conditional), DAT (dative), FUT (future), GER (gerundive), IMP (imperative), IND (indicative), PART (participle), PER(S) (person(s)), PL (plural), PRES (present), SG (singular), SUBJ (subjunctive).

0378-2166/$ -- see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.04.009

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The initial data for the case studies presented in this paper were obtained from the Corpus Textual Informatitzat de la Llengua Catalana (CTILC), developed by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. This corpus contains 52 million words of written data from 1833 to 1988 and comprises a wide range of textual typology. However, searches carried out in this paper were limited to texts which aim to reproduce spoken language (particularly theatre plays, novels and journals). These particular types of texts were chosen because the expressions (CR and idiomatic VP) to be analysed in this paper are typically labelled as ‘‘spoken’’ or ‘‘colloquial’’ in general dictionaries. Many other expressions could have been analysed (e.g. written formal CRs), but colloquial expressions exhibit some features (e.g. expressivity, spontaneity) which are highly relevant for the research questions to be answered here. The data obtained from the CTILC was augmented with Google searches in Catalan websites. These searches, carried out by means of a Google Advanced Search (by language, date, and region), were limited to blogs, online discussions and online papers and magazines either created or updated from January 1st 2008 to January 15th 2011.2 Finally, these data were complemented with information provided by the following Catalan dictionaries: DIEC2, GDLC, DSFF, GD62, DFF and DCC. This paper is organized as follows. After reviewing a classical definition of CRs and its most controversial aspects (sections 1.1 and 1.2), a number of CRs are analysed in the framework of Grammaticalization Theory, focusing on the concept of subjectification as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002) (section 2) and Traugott (2010). Six case studies are presented in order to demonstrate that prototypical CRs, like other fixed (idiomatic) items (e.g. pragmatic markers), can also be regarded as highly subjective forms as a result of the process of subjectification (sections 3 and 4). To support this claim, a synchronic analysis is complemented with a diachronic analysis in which data from the CTILC (particularly from the XIXth century) are compared to data from web searches. In section 5 the overall results of the case studies are discussed.

Importantly, it should be noted that no new definition of CRs is proposed here. The purpose of the present paper is essentially to analyse some of the pragmatic characteristics of CRs with regard to the concept of subjectification as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010). The claim made here is that prototypical CRs should not be regarded just as fixed, usually idiomatic, ‘‘expressions’’ which are ‘‘tied to more or less standardized communication situations’’ (Coulmas, 1981:2) (section 1.1), but mainly as formulaic forms which gradually tend to be more subjective, like pragmatic markers or interjections.

1.1. A classical definition of CRs With the exception of some early studies devoted to formulaic forms (Malinowsky, 1923; Jespersen, 1924; Lyons, 1968; Makkai, 1972), the main interest in CRs rose in the early 1980s thanks to the studies of Coulmas (1981) and Fo´nagy (1982), among others, which appeared to some extent as a reaction against Generative Grammar.3 In fact, the term ‘‘conversational routine’’ used in this paper is due to Coulmas,4 who proposed a classic definition which most scholars have followed up to the present (Aijmer, 1996; Kecskés, 2002; Wray, 2002). Such a definition is as follows: ‘‘Highly conventionalized prepatterned expressions whose occurrence is tied to more or less standardized communication situations. We have at our disposal a large stock of these expressions, for all kind of occasions [. . .].

While most of them, except for one-word formulae such as hi, hello, yes, no, right, well, etc., display grammatical structure, a great many of them are simultaneously either on the brink of lexicalization or have turned into fixed idiomatic units of the lexicon already.’’ (Coulmas, 1981:2--3) Although this definition is rather general, it mentions three features of CRs commonly found in the literature in the field: (1) CRs are lexically fixed to some degree. For example, the Catalan CR T’acompanyo en el sentiment (lit. I am with you in your feelings), used to sympathize with someone for the death of a relative or a friend, is not usually modified to produce similar utterances such as T’acompanyo en el dolor (lit. I am with you in your pain), T’acompanyo en la pena (lit. I am with you in your sadness) or Comparteixo el teu sentiment (lit. I share your feelings). In fact, these later utterances may also be produced and/or interpreted as expressions of sympathy, but native speakers do not regard

2

See Wierzbicka (2009) as an example of how a combined use of corpus analysis and web searches can bring new insights to the field of phraseology.

3 Formulae, including CRs, are fundamental in some functional frameworks, e.g. Construction Grammar, for they are not regarded as marginal forms which cannot be predicted by Generative Grammars, but rather as regular instances of a given construction (see the classic paper of Fillmore et al., 1988). In this vein, Fried and Östman (2004:12) point out: ‘‘In principle, no linguistic unit or grammatical pattern can be given a central status in grammar; for example, pieces of language such as Thank you and See you are just as central to English as Bill loves Mary or The beautiful butterfly landed on a yellow flower’’.

4 Significantly, there is a great variety of other terms to refer to this kind of formulaic utterance. The following are some of the most commonly used by scholars: pragmatic idioms (Burger, 1973; Fraser, 1996), ready-made utterances (Lyons, 1968), verbal stereotypes (Wilss, 1990), conversational formulae (Cowie, 1998), bound utterances (Kiefer, 1996). See Wray (2002) for an exhaustive review.

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them as prototypical as T’acompanyo en el sentiment. Instead, it would be believed that the speaker of such utterance, in spite of her/his good grammatical level, has not mastered completely the pragmatic rules of sympathizing in Catalan (Ferguson, 1976:147; Aijmer, 1996:12).

(2) CRs may be idiomatic. Since their meaning and especially their pragmatic function may not be predicted from their components, CRs may also be idiomatic to some extent. Take as an example the Catalan CR Ara ve quan el maten (lit. now it is when he is going to be killed). This formulaic form is not commonly used as an assertion to inform the addressee that someone is going to be killed, but as a warning that problems are likely to arise in the near future. Such interpretation cannot be predicted at all from the literal meaning of the words contained in the utterance. Therefore, this formulaic form must be learned and stored in the lexicon in a similar way as, e.g. the idiomatic English VP to kick the bucket---the only difference being that the information to be memorized is pragmatic rather than semantic (Kecskés, 2000:612, 2002, 2006; Wray, 2002).

(3) CRs are regularly associated with a particular communicative situation, i.e. they are expected to come up at a certain time and place and to carry out a certain pragmatic function. In fact, they are so strongly associated with such communicative situation that each one is automatically evoked by the other (Verschueren, 1981:134--135; Lüger, 1983:701--702; Zamora, 1998:109, 1999:550; Kecskés, 2002:104).5 For instance, Catalan speakers know that the CR moltes mercès (thanks a lot) is usually uttered to thank, and they have also learned that when someone is thanking someone else, s/he will likely use, among other CRs, moltes mercès. From a communicative point of view, this is of great importance in that, as many scholars have pointed out (Coulmas, 1981:3--5; Gibbs, 1985; Carter, 1987:176; Wray and Perkins, 2000:12), CRs help the speaker to find the most suitable words for some communicative situations and thus make discourse more fluent (Schmitt, 2004; Schmitt and Underwood, 2004).

The literature in the field considers the third the most distinctive feature of CRs with respect to other formulaic forms, including idiomatic VPs such as to kick the bucket (Aijmer, 1996; Kecskés, 2000, 2002, 2006; Wray, 2002; Wray and Perkins, 2000). Like CRs, idiomatic VPs have a fixed lexical form which cannot be easily modified without changing their non-componential semantic content. However, unlike CRs, idiomatic VPs are not associated with a particular communicative situation---following Coulmas’ terms. To better illustrate this, it is worth comparing the definitions provided by the CCED for to kick the bucket and the CR hello, reproduced in (1a) and (1b) respectively: (1a) (1b)

‘‘If you say that someone has kicked the bucket, you mean that they have died; an informal expression which some people find offensive’’ (p. 208) ‘‘1. You say ‘Hello’ to someone when you are greeting them or when you are meeting them for the first time in the course of a day [. . .] 2. You say ‘Hello’ to someone at the beginning of a telephone conversation, either when you answer the phone or before you give your name or say why you are phoning [. . .] 3. Radio or television presenters often say ‘Hello’ at the beginning of a programme, as part of the introduction. 4. You can call ‘hello’ to attract someone's attention [. . .] ‘Hello! Excuse me. This is the department of French, isn’t it?’’’ (p. 786)

The absence of information about the possible communicative situations in which the idiom to kick the bucket may be uttered---apart from saying that it is informal and possibly offensive---indicates that, potentially at least, it may appear in a number of different communicative situations. In contrast, the CR hello---according to the definition given in (1b)---can be uttered only as a greeting, and hence it cannot be used, for example, as a leave-taking expression. Certainly, there are many ways of greeting using hello, e.g. expressing surprise (Hello!, what are you doing here!?), expressing irony (Hello!, don’t you say hello to your friends anymore?) or trying to draw someone's attention (Hello!, anyone there?). However, most uses originate from a prototypical communicative situation in which speakers meet for the first time, or after a period of time, and ritually greet each other. Using Kecskés’ (2000:122) terms, hello has become a ‘‘loaded situation-bound utterance’’ for this linguistic form ‘‘is not dependent on the situation because it is encoded in the expression as a whole’’.6 1.2. The weakness of the classic definition of CRs The definition of CRs proposed by Coulmas has spread significantly in the field of applied linguistics, particularly in the context of language teaching and learning (Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992; Schmitt, 2004; Bardovi-Harlig, 2006; Kasper et al., 2010), but it does not seem to be elaborate enough to characterize these formulaic forms from a theoretical point of

5 In Van Lancker and Rallon's (2004:208) words: ‘‘The expressions See you later! or Let's call it a day! or You don’t say! [. . .] are all familiar, in that native speakers can recognize and complete these utterances (when words are omitted) as well as demonstrate knowledge of their specialized meanings and appropriate contexts’’. See also Van Lancker (2004:8).

6 See also Kecskés (2002, 2006).

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view. Most importantly, it is not clear at all what Coulmas refers to when he claims that CRs are ‘‘tied to more or less standardized communication situations’’, i.e. he does not explain how to find out whether a given item is associated with a communicative situation or not, and which sort of linguistic and pragmatic information must be taken into consideration to measure such association.

In fact, scholars have posed these very same questions since the earliest of studies in the field. Keller (1979, 1981) admits the fuzziness of the term ‘‘gambit’’---coined by himself---when he recognizes the difficulties in distinguishing gambits from other formulaic forms (e.g. the disarmer Not to disagree with you, but. . . can be morphologically and lexically modified by saying I won’t disagree with you, but. . ., or Not that I disagree with you, but. . .). Manes and Wolfson (1981) face the same problem when they study compliments such as Your hair looks nice, I love your hair and This was really a good meal, and ask themselves whether they should be regarded as formulae or not. Bahns et al. (1986) also have to deal with this difficulty when they analyse how children acquire CRs, as they do not have a good theoretical definition to work with. Other scholars argue that some formulaic forms should be regarded as repetitive phrases rather than as forms ‘‘characterized by typical idiom features, such as special meaning, fixed form and grammatical irregularities’’ (Aijmer, 1996:14; Bauer, 1978:10; Pawley and Syder, 1983:212).

More recently, Wray (2002) has also outlined the difficulty in detecting CRs and any kind of formulaic form in general.

She points out that ‘‘identification [of formulaicity] cannot be based on a single criterion, but rather needs to draw on a suite of features’’ (2002:43). Among others, she refers to classic criteria in the literature such as compositionality, formal fixation and intonation, but she adds that none of them is sufficient to determine whether a particular form should be labelled ‘‘formulaic’’ or not (see also Van Lancker, 2004:5). Wray herself illustrates such difficulties by means of not entirely fixed forms such as the utterance Is the Pope a Catholic?, produced as an obvious response to a question. The very same pragmatic interpretation may be achieved by identical questions containing different lexical material, cf. Do fleas like cats?

(Wray, 2002:32).

Formal fixation of CRs is a particularly difficult feature to grasp. This is so because the actual lexical form of a particular CR can be compared only to hypothetically suitable lexical forms. For instance, the English greeting good morning can be reasonably claimed to be fixed as it cannot be replaced by potentially suitable forms such as good day (cf. French bon jour [lit. good day], Spanish buenos días [lit. good days]) or nice morning (cf. Have a nice morning). Furthermore, most CRs display some degree of variability. Consider, for example, the English CR Have a nice day, which may be modified by saying Have a really nice day, Have a great day or You have a nice day now (Van Lancker, 2004:13; see also Aijmer, 1996:21; Kuiper and Everaert, 2000; Van Lancker, 2004:27).

The identification of CRs which focus on their pragmatic function does not solve the problem either. As Wray (2002:52) underlines: ‘‘Since the relationship between a linguistic form and its function is rather unpredictable, a function-based definition runs into as many problems as a purely form-based one’’. That is, even though some regularities may be found, most CRs cannot be claimed to be inseparably linked to the very same pragmatic function, since in the end it is context which determines both the production and interpretation of a particular utterance, formulaic or not. This is the case for that which Kecskés (2002:122) calls ‘‘charged situation-bound utterances’’, i.e. forms which exhibit pragmatic ambiguity depending on the communicative situation in which they are uttered. For example, the utterance Get out of here, may be processed either as a command to leave (Get out of here, I don’t want to see you any more!) or as a kidding response (John, I think you really deserved the money---Oh, get out of here!) (Kecskés, 2002:122). Following the Dynamic Model of Meaning, Kecskés points out that in this particular case we deal with a unique expression having ‘‘at least two almost equally salient meanings’’, and that ‘‘the role of context becomes decisive’’ (2002:122) so as to determine which of the meanings is to be processed (Giora, 2003; Kecskés, 2006).

Like Wray (2002), Read and Nation (2004:23) argue that any account for formulaic forms should combine both qualitative and quantitative methods as formal analysis is not enough by itself, mainly because---following Grant (2003)--even core idioms display some degree of variability. Therefore they suggest that a variety of criteria are needed to define and identify formulaic units, including CRs. These criteria comprise, among others, formal, pragmatic and phonological analysis; corpus-based research, which must be closely supervised by the researcher (e.g. to identify non-contiguous formulaic sequences), and the psycholinguistic approach (Schmitt, 2004; Van Lancker, 2004:12ff; Van Lancker and Rallon, 2004:210ff). Surprisingly, as Van Lancker and Rallon (2004) point out, these theoretical difficulties contrast with the capacity of (non-)native speakers in any language for recognizing what these authors call ‘‘formulaic expressions’’.

To sum up, although most scholars agree to label some formulaic forms as CRs (e.g. greeting and thanking formulae), there is no consensus in many other cases, especially regarding very productive low-fixed constructions which usually--but not always---carry out similar pragmatic functions (Wray, 2002:52). Defining CRs as fixed (idiomatic) lexical forms associated with a particular communicative situation, as Coulmas does, has not proved to be appropriate enough to distinguish CRs from other formulaic forms. Coulmas’ definition and similar ones (e.g. Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992) have turned out to be very useful for didactic purposes, particularly for L2 learning (Bardovi-Harlig, 2006; Kasper et al., 2010), but they still rely too heavily on intuition, as ultimately the striking variety of terminology and taxonomies demonstrates (see Hudson, 1998; Wray, 2002:45, and Van Lancker, 2004, for exhaustive reviews).

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In this paper the term ‘‘conversational routine’’ will be used mainly for expository purposes. Essentially, it will be used to better distinguish what are usually, and vaguely, called ‘‘expressions’’, e.g. Ara hi corro and Ara ve quan el maten, from idiomatic VPs like fer campana and from highly grammaticalized forms such as ‘‘pragmatic markers’’ (Fraser, 1996).

2. CRs and Grammaticalization Theory 2.1. Previous studies CRs have not received much attention in the framework of Grammaticalization Theory. Most studies devoted to linguistic change focus at most on ‘‘discourse particles’’ (Traugott and Dasher, 2002), ‘‘modal particles’’ (Diewald, 2006) and pragmatic markers, which are also difficult categories to define, as the vast bibliography in the field reveals (Aijmer, 2002; Traugott and Dasher, 2002; González, 2004; Onodera, 2004; Brinton and Traugott, 2005). However, as Brinton and Traugott (2005:24) point out, ‘‘the importance of discourse and especially of constructions has [. . .] become central to most research on developments known as grammaticalization’’, and they cite Lehmann (1995:406) to claim that ‘‘grammaticalization does not merely seize a word or a morpheme. . . but instead the whole construction formed by the syntagmatic relations of the element in question’’ (2005:24). From this point of view, Grammaticalization Theory should not deal solely with lexemes which develop a (more) grammatical function until they turn into (zero) morphemes. The theory seems to be capable---potentially at least---to account for any phenomenon related to language change which takes place within any particular construction. Brinton and Traugott themselves argue that many ‘‘phrasal discourse markers’’, including parenthetical comment clauses (e.g. I believe, as you know), complex adverbials (e.g. indeed, in fact), and some kinds of CRs (e.g. thank you, I’m sorry), should not be analysed as cases of lexicalization---as Aijmer (1996) does---but mainly as cases of grammaticalization (Brinton and Traugott, 2005:136).

Before going any further, it should be noted very briefly that the Grammaticalization Theory, which has produced a great amount of research since the 1990s (Heine et al., 1991; Hopper and Traugott, 1993; Bybee et al., 1994; Lehmann, 1995), seeks to explain the linguistic change whereby some lexical forms advance ‘‘from a lexical to a grammatical or from a less grammatical to a more grammatical status’’ (Kuryłowicz, 1975:69). Standard examples of grammaticalization are the development of the Latin cantare habeo ‘sing:INF + have:1SG.PRES’ into the French chanterai ‘sing:1SG.FUT’, and the evolution of the English be going to [V] (motion verb + purposive clause) > gonna (auxiliary) (Brinton and Traugott, 2005:24ff).

A more appropriate example for our purposes here is the grammaticalization of the pragmatic marker I mean (Brinton, 2007). The evolution of this pragmatic marker illustrates most of the major changes undergone by ‘‘phrasal discourse markers’’ in their process of grammaticalization. Such changes are listed below (Brinton, 2007:62): (a) Decategorization: the verb to mean has lost its verbal features (e.g. the capacity for taking phrasal complements) and it has shifted from a major class (verb) to a minor class (adverb). (b) Bleaching: the utterance I mean has lost its full referential meaning and has developed a procedural meaning by means of a conventionalization of invited inferences. (c) Subjectification: I mean has gradually tended to express the speaker's attitude or point of view towards what is said. In Brinton's (2007:note 34) words, ‘‘because of the presence of the first person subject, I mean is necessarily speakeroriented’’ (see also section 3).

These changes have had a great impact on the form of I mean, that is, fossilization (it only admits the 1SG pronoun and PRES tense), coalescence (no elements can be inserted), and phonological attrition or reduction (Brinton, 2007:63). Other changes may also be mentioned in this particular case, namely, divergence (I mean ‘‘continues to be used as a free syntactic combination with main clause status carrying its ‘‘literal’’ meaning’’ [Brinton, 2007:63]), persistence (maintenance of some traces of the original meaning), and layering (it coexists with older similar forms or even replaces some of them, e.g. that is, namely, to wit). These other changes will not be commented on any further here (Brinton, 2007:62).

Grammaticalization Theory has also demonstrated that secondary interjections7 follow similar paths. Good examples to mention are the Catalan Déu n’hi do (approx. quite) and the Spanish y dale! (approx. not again!). Both interjections developed from sentential constructions and turned into ‘‘formula-like expression[s]’’ (Company, 2006a,b): the former developed from the sentence Déu li’n doni (lit. God to-him/her-quantitative-give:3SG.PRES.SUBJ) to emphasize a quantity !

7 Following Ameka (1992), Cuenca (2000) and Norrick (2009), two kinds of interjections are distinguished here: primary interjections and secondary interjections. According to Ameka (1992:105), primary interjections are ‘‘little words or non-words which [. . .] can constitute an utterance by themselves’’, e.g. the English ouch and oh, while secondary interjections are ‘‘forms that belong to other word classes based on their semantics and [. . .] can occur by themselves non-elliptically as one-word utterance’’, e.g. the English damn and sorry.

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(Sancho Cremades, 2003; Mayol, 2008), and the latter evolved from the construction da (give:2SG.IMP) + le (pronoun:3SG. DAT) to express annoyance for the insistence of a person on a particular matter (Company, 2006a,b).

Finally, a few CRs have also been analysed on the basis of Grammaticalization Theory. Examples can be found in Arnovick (2003) and Grzega (2008). Arnovick studies the parting formula God-bye from a diachronic perspective and points out that this ‘‘salutation displays a kind of pragmatic strengthening in its historical development’’ (2003:117). She prefers to call this process ‘‘discursization’’ rather than ‘‘grammaticalization’’ since the original form God be with you already has an ‘‘illocutionary (rather than primarily lexical) function to start with’’ (Arnovick, 2003:117). Grzega (2008) also uses this term, along with grammaticalization, to refer to the pragmatic process whereby phrases originally bearing an inquiry or a wish (e.g. How do you do?, How are you?, good morning) turn into greetings. In this paper, Traugott's (1989) term ‘‘pragmatic strengthening’’---i.e. the process by which a conversational implicature of a given linguistic form become part of its conventional meaning---is preferred.

2.2. Ara hi corro: a CR under analysis In the previous section it was claimed that Grammaticalization Theory offers a suitable framework in which to study the pragmatic strengthening typical of CRs. To exemplify this, the Catalan CR Ara hi corro (lit. now there-I-rush) is analysed in terms of the three major changes associated with grammaticalization mentioned above, namely, decategorization, bleaching and subjectification (section 2.1). The results indicate that this formulaic form has started undergoing a grammaticalization process comparable to that undergone by pragmatic markers and interjections.

The DSFF points out that Ara hi corro is generally used to refuse a command or a suggestion, as shown in (2a), from the Catalan translation of Waiting for Godot, cf. (2b). In this excerpt Vladimir asks Estragon to embrace him but he refuses to do it.8 (2a)

Vladímir: Aixeca’t, get up, Estragon: (irritat) (irritated)

que that Ara now

vull abraçar-te I-want to embrace-you hi corro there-rush:1SG.PRES.IND (CTILC: Tot esperant Godot, by J. Oliver)

(2b)

Vladimir: Get up till I embrace you Estragon: (irritably) Not now, not now (from Waiting for Godot, by S. Beckett)

Bearing in mind the grammaticalization parameters described by Brinton (2007) and Brinton and Traugott (2005:25, 99), it can be suggested that ara hi corro has started a grammaticalization path. Firstly, the low inflective variability of the verb co´rrer (to run, to rush) indicates that this formulaic form has started a decategorization process. The verb has almost lost its morphological flexibility, since---as the DSFF also points out---it clearly prefers the 1SG.PRES.IND morpheme -o.9 The data from the CTILC and Catalan websites confirm such a preference (see Fig. 1), as most tokens found (80%) take this particular inflective morpheme.

8 Importantly, neither Ara hi corro nor any of the other formulaic forms analysed in this paper are claimed to be associated with a sole, particular, pragmatic function. On the contrary, all the formulaic forms analysed here may carry out a number of different pragmatic functions as their pragmatic interpretation depends ultimately on the context in which they are produced and interpreted. (In a similar way to pragmatic markers, whose multifunctionality has been recognised since the early studies devoted to this class of linguistic forms; see Schiffrin, 1987; Brinton, 1996; Fraser, 1996.) However, this paper focuses on the pragmatic functions most widely recognised both by native speakers and dictionaries. The CR Ara hi corro is a good example in this respect. This formulaic form is defined by the DSFF as ‘‘an expression to reject something not wanted to be done/expression used as a reply to reject what someone is told to do’’ (p. 1212), and this is actually the most likely pragmatic interpretation of 23 out of the 30 tokens of Ara hi corro found in the data. (i) reproduces one of the few tokens which can be interpreted as a positive answer, not as a rejection.

(i) ---No tens pas enciam?---li va preguntar el soldat ‘do you have any lettuce by any chance?---the soldier asked [Fina]’ ---Sí que en tinc! Ara hi corro---respongué la Fina ‘I do have some! I’ll get some right now---Fina replied’ (from the tales website http://www.xesco.cat/) Interestingly, in (i) both the locative clitic hi and the verb corro can be interpreted literally (hi referring to Fina's house, and corro meaning literally ‘to run’). Hence this particular token was not collected as a prototypical example of the rejecting ‘‘expression’’ analysed here.

9 The following are the grammatical categories distinguished in the Catalan verbal paradigm: person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular, plural), tense (present, past, future), aspect (perfect, imperfect), and mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative). See Wheeler et al. (1999) for a more detailed description.

[(Fig._1)TD$IG]

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Total 25 number of tokens 20 15 10 5 0 Pres. ind.

(1sg)

Pres. Past ind. ind. (other pers.)

Fut.

Temporal/modal inflection

Fig. 1. Verbal inflective variability of Ara hi corro. Total number of tokens: 29. Verbal inflective morphemes occurrence (in %): PRES. IND. (1SG), 80%; PRES. IND. (other pers.), 10%; PAST IND., 6.6%; FUT., 3.3%.

As Fig. 1 shows, other inflective morphemes may be taken, but they are far from being as frequent as the 1SG.PRES.IND morpheme. Example (3) reproduces one of the only two past-tensed tokens found in the data, both of them collected from a XIX century novel included in the CTILC. In this particular case the CR is located in an excerpt in free indirect speech, which explains why the verb (corría, rush:1SG.PAST.IND) is inflected in the past. ?

(3)

Per anar á casa y passar potser un moment de vergonya devant d’aquell oncle burleta ‘why should I go home? To feel embarrassed because of that cheeky uncle que s’entretenía en ferla petar per pervericar? Sí, ara hi corría! who only enjoys saying cheeky things to me? No way!’

(CTILC: La febre d’or II, by N. Oller) !

Secondly, the semantic changes undergone by the locative clitic hi (there) provide good evidence that Ara hi corro has also started undergoing a bleaching process. Originally this unstressed pronoun substituted an argumental Prepositional Phrase (PP) expressing destination, either locative (see (4a), in which hi has a full locative meaning) or metaphorical (see (4b), in which the clitic stands for the PP a cridar-lo [to call him]).

(4a)

Beatriu: Sí, convé que hi vagi de seguida. Em vesteixo i hi corro.

‘Yes, I should go immediately. I’ll get dressed, and I’ll run [there].

Us hi esperaré I’ll wait for you there’ (CTILC: El criat de dos amos, by J. Oliver)

(4b)

Client: costumer: Alcavota: procuress:

Porti’n una altra! ‘bring another [bottle of champagne!]’

Ara hi corro, ara hi corro ‘I will, I will’ (CTILC: Estat d’emergència, by X. Romeu i Jover)

However, as Todolí (2002:1424, 1428) and Rigau (2002:2082) point out, at the present time the clitic hi rarely substitutes PPs working as destination arguments of motion verbs like co´rrer. It only does so in some particular ‘‘fossilized expressions’’ such as Ara hi corro and Correm-hi tots! (lit. let all us rush [to do it]). Instead the full argumental PP is preferred (e.g. Corro [a cridar-lo]PP, ‘I rush to call him’, GDLC). This suggests that hi has progressively lost its referential meaning and has turned into an expletive pronoun similar to the expletive hi found in a number of Catalan verbs (e.g. jugar-s’hi, to bet; no tocar-hi, to be insane) (Todolí, 2002:1424).10 Finally, Ara hi corro also seems to have undergone a subjectification process as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002), Brinton (2007) and Traugott (2010) (see section 3.2). The semantic evolution of the verb co´rrer-hi (to rush [to do it])

10 Non-expletive uses of the pronoun hi can still be found in my data set; see (i), in which the pronoun is co-referent to the detached PP a comparho (to buy it). This example of persistence (section 2.1) also indicates that the CR Ara hi corro has not decategorized completely into an interjection.

(i) Ara hij corro [a comprar-ho]j!!!!! Segur que hi ha com a mínim 25 rieslings alemanys i 30 gewürztraminers now there-run:1SG.PRES.IND to buy-it for sure that there is at least 25 rieslings german and 30 gewürztraminers ‘I won’t follow [that wine list] to buy my own wine. Probably there are only Riesling and Gewürztraminer wines’ (from the wine review website http://www.vadevi.cat)

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is highly illustrative of an increase of subjectivity over time. Compare examples in (5). In (5a), taken from a mid-XIX century theatre play, the verb co´rrer-hi is used in a positive answer to a command (here the answer is uttered by a servant who obeys reluctantly his master's command). In this case the pragmatic inferences to be derived from the utterance---that is, acceptance---are straightforward from the semantic content of the verb. Similar examples can also be found in the XX century data, see (4b), and even in website blogs, see (5b)---in which, interestingly, the blogger points out that Ara hi corro should be interpreted literally, not ironically. However, the most likely pragmatic interpretation of most tokens found in the data (76%) is an ironic answer to a command or a suggestion, see (5c). Note in this example that in the latter example the pragmatic inferences involved in the interpretation of Ara hi corro are more elaborated than those in (5a): the addressee must infer that the agreement expressed by the speaker is, in fact, an ironic way of rejecting his suggestion. As seen above (see section 1), this is the use of Ara hi corro described in contemporary Catalan dictionaries.

(5a)

Jau: Arriba á la plaza y ns’ dirás lo que es axo´ ‘go to the square and tell us what the matter is’ Ant: Ja y corro, nostramu, luego already there-run:1SG.PRES.IND, my lord, later ‘later I’ll go, my lord’ (CTILC: La caida de Morella, by D.R.M.)

(5b)

Blogger 1: Ara només falta que us afegiu al grup!!! ‘[The blog] is ready so join it any time’ Blogger 2: Ara hi corro! [TD$INLE] Però de veritat, eh, no pas irònicament. . . now there-run:1SG.PRES.IND but truly, eh, not ironically ‘I’ll join it immediately. I’m speaking seriously. I’m not being ironic’ (adapted from the literature blog http://www.ploma.quellegeixes.cat)

(5c)

Blogger 1: [I recommend that you use Google Chrome for your searches] Blogger 2: Sí ara hi corro a abandonar el Firefox yes now there-run:1SG.PRES.IND to abandon Firefox ‘(ironic) Of course I will. I’ll stop using Firefox right now’ (adapted from the personal blog http://www.farre.cat)

This evolution indicates that a process of subjectification has taken place. Some initial, local, pragmatic inferences---that is, rejection by expressing an ironic agreement---have become part of the meaning of Ara hi corro. Ultimately, this also suggests that a new form-meaning pairing has emerged and two different forms should be distinguished. On the one hand, a form which has not enriched its semantic content, e.g. (5a) and (5b), and is becoming an anachronism; and, on the other hand, a form, e.g. (5c), which has encoded the speaker's negative attitude towards the addressee's previous utterance, usually a command or a suggestion.

In fact it may be claimed that changes undergone by Ara hi corro and other CRs reflect a lexicalization process rather than a grammaticalization process. Two main arguments can be adduced in this vein. Firstly, no increase of frequency and productivity---both of them major characteristics of grammaticalization (Brinton and Traugott, 2005:95)---of Ara hi corro are found in my data set. For instance, only 14 out of the 119 tokens of the verbal form corro (run/rush:1SG.PRES) found in the CTILC co-occur with the temporal adverb ara (now) and the clitic hi (there), 10 of which have clearly grammaticalized into the CR Ara hi corro. Such a low number of tokens suggests that this form is far from being as frequent as other well-known cases of grammaticalization in Catalan, e.g. the ‘‘perfet perifràstic’’ (anar [to go] + Vinf) (Detges, 2004). Secondly, Ara hi corro has neither reduced its syntactic scope nor has fixed its position within the sentence, as has also been observed in relation to pragmatic markers (Tabor and Traugott, 1998; Aijmer, 2002; Dostie, 2004; Günthner and Mutz, 2004; Onodera, 2004; Company Company, 2006a; Brinton, 2007). However, there are also strong arguments to maintain that Ara hi corro has undergone grammaticalization. First of all, the increase of subjectification exhibited by this formulaic form is commonly regarded as a defining feature of grammaticalization, not of lexicalization (Brinton and Traugott, 2005).

Secondly, Ara hi corro has not evolved into a major class (noun, verb, adjective), as is the case in standard lexicalization processes, but into an interjection (Cuenca, 2000). The Grammaticalization Theory, as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002), also aims to account for phenomena that go beyond the sentence, including pragmatic markers and interjections, mainly because they are also part of the grammar (Traugott, 2007:150).11

11 For further research related to the controversial relation between grammaticalization and lexicalization, see Wischer (2000), Himmelmann (2004), Brinton and Traugott (2005), Haas (2007), Fischer (2008) and Norde (2009).

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To sum up, there is good evidence to claim that the CR Ara hi corro has undergone a grammaticalization process. Its low verbal inflective variability, the semantic bleaching of the pronoun hi and the overall increase of subjectivity indicate that Ara hi corro has started a grammaticalization process similar to that undergone by other well-known Catalan formulaic forms, e.g. the interjection Déu n’hi do (Sancho Cremades, 2003; Mayol, 2008) (section 2.1). Ultimately what this particular case shows is that CRs, like any other linguistic form, are also exposed to grammaticalization processes.12 3. A grammaticalization path for CRs? 3.1. The role of subjectification In the previous section it was suggested that Grammaticalization Theory can shed some light on the study of CRs in that it can contribute a new perspective to the understanding of this rather fuzzy category. In this vein, the CR Ara hi corro was analysed as an example of how Grammaticalization Theory can account for the grammaticalization processes which CRs may undergo. Yet there are a number of questions to answer. Firstly, is grammaticalization a distinctive feature of CRs compared to other formulaic (idiomatic) forms, e.g. the idiomatic VP fer campana? And, secondly, if grammaticalization is not a key feature in the picture of these particular formulaic forms, how can their pragmatic strengthening be accounted for? In the analysis of Ara hi corro seen above (section 2.2), Grammaticalization Theory accounts satisfactorily for the evolution of this particular CR from a freely generated utterance towards a formulaic form close to an interjection. However, as it will be seen in the following sections, there are also CRs which, unlike Ara hi corro, do not seem to have grammaticalized into another category at all.

The purpose of this paper, as outlined above (section 1), is to shed light on the pragmatic enrichment undergone by CRs in order to better differentiate them from other formulaic forms, particularly from idiomatic VPs such as fer campana or to kick the bucket. More precisely, in the following sections it will be claimed that subjectification, as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010), rather than grammaticalization, can be of great help in making such a distinction clearer. It will be demonstrated that the CRs under analysis below have become more subjective than other formulaic forms, including idiomatic VPs, without having grammaticalized necessarily into another category. Subjectification hence will be regarded here as a broader phenomenon that can on its own play an important role in the pragmatic enrichment of CRs and can, to some extent at least, account for the pragmatic differences that CRs display with respect to other formulaic forms. Yet it should be underlined that nothing prevents CRs from undergoing grammaticalization processes.

Rather what this paper claims is that the pragmatic enrichment of CRs is the result of a subjectification process that, in some particular cases, may turn into grammaticalization.

3.2. Traugott and Dasher's definition of subjectification Traugott and Dasher define subjectification as follows: ‘‘Subjectification is the semasiological process whereby SP/Ws [speakers/writers] come over time to develop meanings for Ls [lexemes] that encode or externalize their perspectives and attitudes as constrained by the communicative world of the speech event’’ (2002:30) Subjectification is understood by Traugott and Dasher as the process by which lexemes (either modal particles, pragmatic markers, or whatever) encode the speaker's attitude towards a given proposition. This is not a straightforward type of semantic change, but a gradual process by which some local inferences are progressively encoded in the lexeme meaning (Traugott and Dasher, 2002:34).13 Put differently the increase of subjectivity undergone by some lexemes is the result of a pragmatic strengthening that has gradually been encoded in the semantic content of such lexemes.14

12 González (2007) makes similar observations regarding the copular Spanish construction El amor es lo que tiene (equivalent to the English That's love for you) as a case of ‘‘incipient grammaticalization’’. According to González García, this construction has undergone some of the major changes associated with grammaticalization, namely, decategorization (the verbal form es [is] is on the edge of fossilization), pragmatic strengthening, subjectification (it encodes ‘‘a judgemental stance on the subject/speaker’’ [González, 2007:79]), coalescence and fusion. The sole exception is increase of frequency, as this grammaticalized construction is far less frequent than its non-grammaticalized counterpart. See similar analysis of CRs in Ruiz Gurillo (2010) and Defrancq and De Clerk (2011).

13 A rather different definition of subjectification can be found in Langacker (1987, 1991, 2002, 2006), who instead regards this process as the attenuation of the subject (see also De Smet and Verstraete, 2006; Cuyckens et al., 2010). See also Verhagen (2005, 2007) for a cognitive, synchronic, definition of subjectivity. For a comparison between Traugott's concept of subjectification and other authors’ definitions, see Traugott (2010: 31) and Athanasiadou et al. (2006).

14 Traugott and Dasher's (2002) concept of subjectification comprises what they call ‘‘intersubjectification’’ so as to better capture the addressee's role in the increasing of subjectivity (see also Davidse et al., 2010). However, this paper focuses on subjectivity as a general phenomenon and postpones the analysis of intersubjectification in relation to CRs for future research.

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It should be underlined that Traugott and Dasher's view of subjectification ‘‘explicitly encodes SP/W's point of view, for example in deixis, modality, and marking of discourse strategies’’ (2002:21). Their definition of subjectification thus relies heavily on modals, deictics, and adverbials, among other ‘‘linguistic markers’’ (Traugott, 2010:32) so as to determine the degree of subjectivity displayed by a particular form. Following the most widespread terminology in the literature on deixis (Fillmore, 1997 [1971]; Lyons, 1977, 1982; Levinson, 1983; Hanks, 1992), Traugott and Dasher's (2002:22, 233) use the terms ‘‘anchoring’’ and ‘‘grounding’’ to refer to the process by which explicit linguistic elements such as deictics, morphemes and adverbs ‘‘orient’’ utterances relative to the speech event as conceptualized by the speaker and the addressee. The same terminology will be used in this paper.15 Traugott and Dasher (2002:22) consider maximally objective those expressions which: (a) are uttered in a declarative mood, (b) express all participants in an event structure, (c) contain minimal deictic information (i.e. they are minimally concerned with the interlocutor's perspective), and (d) the Q-heuristic predominates (i.e. ‘‘context for meanings are provided so that interpretation is strongly determined’’ [2002:23]). In contrast, maximally subjective expressions are those expressions which contain overt spatial and temporal deixis, have explicit markers of the speaker/writer's attitude towards what is said or towards the preceding and following discourse, and in which the R-heuristic predominates (i.e. no context is provided and the interpretation has to be enriched). Accordingly, in Traugott and Dasher's terms, the utterance in (6a) is maximally objective (it is produced in a declarative mood, all participants in the event are expressed, and minimal deictic information and contextual information are provided), whereas the performative verbal form I promise in (6b) heads a maximally subjective utterance.16 (6a)

[written in a newspaper report about the Danish president's schedule] On October 12th 2003 the Danish president visited a new car factory in Copenhagen

(6b)

[said by a father to his young son while passing an amusement park] I promise we’ll go there tomorrow

A clear distinction between subjectivity and subjectification is required at this point. Following Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010), subjectivity will refer in this paper to the speaker's attitude towards what is said. This attitude may be reflected explicitly by a number of linguistic devices, e.g. mood markers. Subjectification, as understood in this paper, is the process by which the speaker's attitude becomes encoded in the semantic meaning of a given form (Traugott and Dasher, 2002; Traugott, 2010; see also Cuyckens et al., 2010:8). The formal parameters described above (that is, deictic information, and provision of ‘‘context for meaning’’), alongside diachronic data, may provide good evidence to determine whether a form has undergone subjectification or not. In this paper these parameters, combined with diachronic data, will be applied to a number of CRs to find out to what extent these formulaic forms may also undergo subjectification.

Importantly, it must be pointed out that subjectivity may be completely independent of any grounding devices. This implies that the presence of, for example, the pronoun I does not entail that the utterance must be interpreted as maximally subjective. For instance, an utterance like I have wine with my dinner may be objective given the appropriate communicative situation (e.g. as an answer to the doctor's question Do you have any alcohol?). Ultimately the interpretation of the utterance will always depend on the context in which it occurs, not on the grounding devices which anchor it. Grounding devices orient the addressee towards those elements of the ground (that is, the speaker, the addressee and the here-and-now of the speech event) which are most relevant to interpret the utterance, but they are not ultimately responsible for the interpretation of such a utterance (see Traugott, 2010:58--59) (see also fn. 25).

In summary, subjectification as viewed here has proved to be particularly useful in the description of the semantic changes undergone by lexemes which have developed into modals (e.g. will, be going to) (Traugott and Dasher, 2002:82; Traugott, 2010) or into discourse markers (e.g. indeed, in fact, Japanese sate, so) (Traugott and Dasher, 2002:152). More recently, it has also been used to analyse different forms, e.g. the French definite article (Carlier and De Mulder, 2010) and English adjectives of completeness (Ghesquière, 2010). To my knowledge, however, it has not been extensively applied to CRs.

15 As Enfield (2003) has remarked regarding expressions such as What’d you call it in utterances like Where's the what’d you call it?, grounding should not be regarded just as the final step of utterance production, but instead as the necessary link between a given linguistic form and the speech event, including the relevant information (partially or fully) shared by its participants.

16 From a cognitive perspective, Verhagen (2005:17) makes similar observations about the English greeting interjection hi! when he exemplifies the differences between maximally subjective forms and minimally subjective forms. According to Verhagen, a simple-tensed sentence like John owns a horse is grounded rather objectively and, in the appropriate ground, it licenses particular inferences (e.g. John owns a horse, but he is actually very poor), whereas the greeting hi! is maximally subjective in that it conventionally underlines the relationship between the speaker and the addressee, both of them elements of the ground.

[(Fig._2)TD$IG]

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Total 50 number of 45 tokens 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Temporal/modal inflection

Fig. 2. Verbal inflective variability of fer campana. Total number of tokens: 140. Verbal inflective morphemes occurrence (in %): PRES. IND., 18.5%; PAST IND., 32.1%; FUT., 2.8%; PRES. SUBJ., 5%; PAST SUBJ., 3.5%; IMP., 0.7%; INF., 32.1%; GER., 5%.

4. Subjectification of CRs 4.1. CRs vs. idiomatic VPs Before analyzing a number of CRs, it is worth comparing the CR Ara hi corro (section 2.2) to the idiomatic VP fer campana (to play truant, lit. to make bell) (section 1) regarding the concept of subjectification. The significant differences between these two kinds of formulaic forms in this respect can be of great in order to better understand to what extent CRs have undergone subjectification.

Firstly, from a diachronic point of view, fer campana has not undergone any subjectification process as its semantic content (‘to play truant’, or more generally, ‘not to attend someone's diary obligations’, DSFF) has not evidenced any increase in subjectivity across time. Contrary to Ara hi corro (see section 2.2), all tokens of fer campana found in the XIX century data exhibit the very same non-compositional meaning described in contemporary dictionaries. In the XIX century this idiomatic VP was already a colloquial, expressive alternative to the compositional VP no anar a classe (not to go to class), and this meaning has remained the same in contemporary Catalan since then at least.17 Such semantic stability suggests that, in contrast with Ara hi corro, the XIX century VP fer campana and the present one are the same form. The latter cannot be said to be more subjective than the former, and hence to have turned into a different lexical item through a subjectification process. This also suggests that any pragmatic inferences to be drawn from the VP are still local, that is, they are not part of the encoded meaning of the form.

Secondly, the VP fer campana is highly idiomatic, but in contrast with the CR Ara hi corro it is not constrained as far as its verbal inflection is concerned. Nothing prevents it from being grounded by a number of different verbal inflective morphemes, as Fig. 2 shows.18

17 See, for instance, the following example, in which an employer tells off an employee for not working hard enough: (i) Y cuand no feya campana, en lloch d’escríurer dormia and when you didn’t make bell, instead of writing you slept ‘and when eventually you came to work, instead of writing, you slept’ (CTILC: Qui al cel escup. . ., by Marçal Busquets) 18 At this point it is particularly relevant to underline that the relation between verbal inflection and illocutionary force is not straightforward at all, but only---if anything---indirectly motivated. Hence no correspondence between verbal inflection and illocutionary force is claimed in this paper. As is well-known, the illocutionary force depends on the overall information available in the context of production and interpretation of a particular utterance, not on its indexical information solely. To put it differently, the very same illocutionary force may be achieved by means of distinct inflective forms, and vice versa: identical inflective forms may lead to completely different pragmatic interpretations. See (i) and (ii) as examples of the former case, and (iii) as an example of the latter.

(i) (ii) (iii)

Ahir el president danès va visitar la nova fàbrica de cotxes a Copenhagen ‘yesterday the Danish president visited the new car factory in Copenhagen’ Demà el president danès visitarà la nova fàbrica de cotxes a Copenhagen ‘tomorrow the Danish president will visit the new car factory in Copenhagen’ [said by an employee to another at lunch time] Vas a dinar? ‘are you having lunch?’

(i) and (ii) are grounded differently (the former in the past, the latter in the future), but both utterances may have a predominantly representative illocutionary force in the appropriate communicative situation (e.g. a newspaper report about the Danish president's schedule). In contrast, (iii) is ambiguous in that it can be interpreted in two completely distinct ways at least: (a) as a plain inquiry about addressee's plans (so as to know, e.g. if s/he is available for a quick meeting, or to ask her/him to bring some food on the way back), and (b) as an indirect invitation to have lunch together.

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See some examples in (7), in which fer campana is grounded by means of the 3SG.PRES.IND morpheme (7a), the 3PL. morpheme (7b), the INF morpheme (7c), and the 2SG.IMP morpheme (7d).

PAST.IND

(7a)

[beginning of a joke] Això és un nen que fa campana al col legi i torna aviat a casa i. . . this is a boy that make:3SG.PRES.IND bell at school and comes soon home and. . . ‘there is this boy who plays truant and arrives home soon and. . .’ (from the jokes website http://www.acudits.net)

(7b)

Es pensen que només [. . .] les dones alletem, el dia que parlaven dels mamífers they-think that only [. . .] the women we-feed, the day that they[impersonal]-talked about the mammals a cole van fer campana at school make:3PL.PAST.IND bell ‘[some men] think that only we, the women, feed babies: they played truant the day the lesson about mammals was given’ (from the motherhood blog http://criatures.ara.cat/somlallet/blog)

(7c)

Com alguns dels meus companys, em sentia inclinat bastant sovint a fer campana like some of my mates, I-felt inclined quiet often to make:INF bell ‘like some of my mates, I felt like playing truant quite often’ (CTILC: Memòries, by J.M. de Sagarra [adapted])

(7d)

Fes campana!

El primer és el país! make:2SG.IMP bell! The first is the country! ‘play truant [and go to the political meeting]! The country comes first! (from the forum http://www.racocatala.cat)

This inflective variability contrasts with the morphologic rigidity of Ara hi corro. Whereas an idiomatic VP like fer campana may be grounded in a number of ways, as the examples in (7) show, the CR Ara hi corro rarely takes anything but the 1SG. PRES.IND morpheme, cf. Fig. 1. Such contrast is far from incidental. Note that fer campana can be grounded both subjectively and objectively in Traugott and Dasher's (2002) terms (see section 3.2).19 In (7a)--(7c) fer campana is grounded objectively as (a) the verb fer (to make) or the main verb (sentia, ‘I felt’, in (7c)) are in declarative mood and (b) the utterance provides context for meaning (a boy in (7a), the day they talked about mammals in class in (7b), and I felt like in (7c)). In (7d), by contrast, fer campana is grounded subjectively as it takes imperative morphemes (see Traugott, 2010:59) and no context for meaning is provided explicitly.

As noted above (see section 3.2), Ara hi corro exhibits a complete different grounding.This CR is regularly uttered in declarative mood, but is highly subjective in that (a) it hardly admits anything but the subjective 1SG.PRES.IND morpheme, (b) it contains the clitic hi, an overt deictic expression referring to the preceding discourse, and (c) it must be enriched with contextual information: the verb co´rrer-hi must refer to the speaker and the clitic hi must refer to a previous command or suggestion. Hence it is no surprise that no objective tokens of Ara hi corro such as (8) have been found in the data. In (8) (a) the verb is in declarative mood but it refers to a third person in the past, not to the actual speaker, and (b) context for meaning is provided to better interpret the clitic hi (i.e. the command que em deixés deu euros [‘to lend me ten euros’] needs to be provided to understand what the clitic stands for).

(8) [complaining about a mean friend] Li vaig dir que em deixés deu euros, però em va dir que aleshores hi corria to-her/him-I-asked to me-lend ten euros, but s/he-said that then there-rush:3SG.PAST.IND ‘I asked her/him to lend me ten euros, but s/he said that s/he wouldn’t’ (constructed example)

19 As Traugott and Dasher (2002:98) point out, ‘‘[m]ost frequently an expression is neither subjective or objective in itself; rather the whole utterance and its context determine the degree of subjectivity’’. For this reason, the terms ‘‘highly subjective’’ and ‘‘lowly subjective’’ are more appropriate than ‘‘subjective’’ and ‘‘objective’’ to refer to the degree of subjectivity exhibited by a particular utterance. However, the dichotomy subjective/objective will also be used in this paper for expository reasons.

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What this suggests is that a theoretical line should be drawn between CRs like Ara hi corro and idiomatic VPs like fer campana: both forms are fixed and idiomatic to some extent, but only the CR is reluctant to an objective grounding. Put differently, only the CR seems to have undergone subjectification.20 The data presented in the following sections support this claim. The CRs analysed below suggest that the idiom fer campana and the CR Ara hi corro should be regarded as the opposite ends of the same continuum. Both forms are fixed and idiomatic, but only the CR is highly subjective. In between these two ends of the continuum there is a great variety of formulaic forms which, without having decategorized into, e.g. interjections or pragmatic markers, are also highly subjective.

4.2. The gradualness of subjectification The comparison between the idiomatic VP fer campana and the CR Ara hi corro seen in the previous section reveals significant differences as far as their grounding is concerned. While the idiomatic VP has a priori no constraints in being grounded rather objectively, the CR does display some important restrictions. The responsibility for this, it is suggested here, is the subjectification process undergone by CRs like Ara hi corro but not by idiomatic VPs like fer campana.

However, as was also pointed out above (section 4.1), the opposition between CRs and idiomatic VPs is not clear-cut at all, but rather gradual. The formulaic forms analysed in this section are examples of such gradualness.

4.2.1. The idiomatic VP anar-se’n a fer punyetes From a diachronic point of view, the idiomatic VP anar-se’n a fer punyetes (approx. ‘go to hell’) is one of the many expressions created in old Catalan from the taboo sexual word punyeta (pl. punyetes).21 Over time this sexual meaning bleached, but all contemporary forms containing punyeta, including the VP anar-se’n a fer punyetes, still exhibit a high degree of expressivity (DCVB; DECat). More particularly, in contemporary Catalan the idiomatic anar-se’n a fer punyetes (approx. to go to hell) means, if referring to inanimate Noun Phrases (NPs), that something is irremediably lost. See the examples below: (9a)

Evidentment no has de dir ni una sola mentida, si no, tota la teva credibilitat se’n va a fer punyetes obviously not have to say not even a lie, if not, all your credibility it-go:3SG.PRES.IND to hell ‘obviously you shouldn’t lie, otherwise your credibility goes to hell’ (from the blog http://blocs.xtec.cat/jperales/page/8/)

(9b)

Aquell projecte de curta però significada llibertat d’expressio´ se’n va anar a fer punyetes that project of short but significant liberty of expression go:3SG.PAST.IND to hell ‘that short, but full of freedom of expression, project [a clandestine radio station during Franco dictatorship] went to hell’ (CTILC: Regio´ 7)

(9c)

Hem de governar o, si no, el país se n’anirà a fer punyetes we must govern or, if not, the country go:3SG.FUT to hell ‘[our party] must be in government, otherwise, the country will go to hell’ (from the magazine http://www.revistacambrils.com)

20 As one of the reviewers insightfully points out, the differences between fer campana and Ara hi corro cannot be merely reduced to a matter of subjectification. Formal fixation and idiomaticity are gradient phenomena which also contribute to more refined differences between these two formulaic forms. Fer campana seems to be highly idiomatic but it can be modified in a number of ways (e.g. fer campanes [lit. to make bells], fer alguna campana [lit. to make some bells], fer moltes campanes [lit. to make lots of bells], fer una campanota [lit. to make a big bell], fer tantes campanes com es pugui [lit. to make as many bells as possible]). In contrast, Ara hi corro seems to be less idiomatic---given the semantic meaning of co´rrer (to rush) (see section 2.2)---but rather restricted as far as its form is concerned (cf. ?després hi corro [lit. later I rush (to do it)], ?demà hi corro [lit. tomorrow I rush (to do it)], ?ara hi corro tant com pugui [lit. now I rush as much as I can]). From this point of view, the process of subjectification undergone by Ara hi corro does nothing but broaden some existing differences in idiomaticity and formal fixation between this formulaic form and the VP fer campana.

21 According to the DCVB and the DECat, punyeta had the sexual meaning of ‘masturbation’ in old Catalan---alongside the Spanish puñ eta and the Italian pugnetta---and was the origin of a number of expressions, e.g. anar-se’n a fer punyetes (lit. to go to do punyetes, ‘to masturbate’). In contemporary Catalan the word punyeta lacks a specific, identifiable, semantic meaning for it depends largely on the context in which it occurs.

For instance, punyeta may mean ‘annoyance’ (Això de no poder fumar és una punyeta, lit. ‘not being able to smoke is annoying’, GDLC), ‘something irrelevant’ (Deixa’t de punyetes i vés al gra, ‘don’t say silly things and get to the point’, GDLC), ‘very far’ (a la quinta punyeta, lit. ‘at the fifth punyeta’, GDLC), or it may even be an interjection (Punyeta, com crema!, ‘damn, that's hot!’). This taboo meaning may explain why the first occurrences of anar-se’n a fer punyetes in the CTILC do not appear until the mid-XX century.

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Fig. 3. Verbal inflective variability of anar-se’n a fer punyetes referring to inanimate NPs. Total number of tokens: 132. Verbal inflective morphemes occurrence (in %): PRES. IND., 37.1%; PAST IND., 29.5%; FUT., 12.8%; COND., 5.3%; PRES. SUBJ., 5.3%; PAST SUBJ., 2.1%; INF., 6.8%; GER., 0.7%.

In all these examples the VP anar-se’n a fer punyetes emphasizes the speaker's subjective view about the loss---other verbs are suitable here (cf. perdre, ‘to loose’, in (9a); fracassar, ‘to fail’, in (9b); entrarà en crisi, ‘to be in crisis’, in (9c)) but they are far less expressive. However, this does not imply that this idiomatic VP, if referring to inanimate NPs, has undergone a subjectification process. Despite its expressive meaning, it can be found in a number of different communicative situations and it may produce a number of different pragmatic interpretations depending on the context in which it occurs, e.g. advice (9a), regret (9b) or prediction (9c). This suggests that no particular initial pragmatic inferences have become part of the encoded meaning of the form.

With regard to its formal characteristics, anar-se’n a fer punyetes, when referring to inanimate NPs, tends to be grounded by PRES.IND, PAST.IND and FUT morphemes (see Fig. 3), that is, it tends to be grounded in declarative mood.

Examples in (9) illustrate this tendency. Note also that all these examples provide contexts to understand what is lost (your credibility in (9a), that project in (9b), and the country in (9c)) and they contain minimal deictic information. This suggests that anar-se’n a fer punyetes, when referring to inanimate NPs, tends to be grounded rather objectively and hence that it has not undergone any subjectification process as defined here. From this point of view, it is quite similar to the idiomatic VP fer campana for, as above (see section 4.1), the latter can also be grounded objectively.

Interestingly, however, when anar-se’n a fer punyetes refers to animate NPs, things are slightly different. In this case the expression is regularly used to get rid of the addressee or, less frequently, a third person (GDLC, DIEC2, DSFF).

Utterance (10a), produced to get rid of the addressee and finish a discussion, and utterance (10b), produced to complain about a computer breakdown, are good examples in this respect.

(10a)

Amb tu no es pot discutir. Vés-te’n a fer punyetes! with you no one-can discuss. go:2SG.IMP to hell!

‘I can never talk to you. Go to hell!’

(CTILC: Incerta glòria, by J. Sales)

(10b)

L’ordinador ha dit [. . .] que me’n vagi a fer punyetes i que n’està fart que l’esclavitzi! the computer said [. . .] that go:1SG.PRES.SUBJ to hell and that it-is-tired that I-treat-it as a slave ‘the computer told me to go to hell and that it does not want to be my slave anymore’ (from the blog http://www.cuinaperllaminers.com)

Here the idiomatic VP anar-se’n a fer punyetes is not only very expressive, but also very subjective: when referring to animate NPs, this idiomatic VP regularly displays the speaker's annoyance towards the addressee (or a third person) and is used to exhort her/him to put end to a discussion or even to quit the speech event. Unexpectedly, other pragmatic uses, though possible, are not found in the data. Note that only one non-exhortative token was collected in my data set, here reproduced in (11): (11)

[written by an amateur jogger who could not finish a marathon] He aguantat el dolor fins al 30 però cada cop s’ha fet més insuportable i m’he anat a fer punyetes I have stood the pain until the 30 but every time it-was more unbearable and go:1SG.PAST.IND to hell ‘I stood the pain until 30 km, but it got worse and worse, and I had to stop’ (from the sports website http://www.corredors.cat/)

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Total 35 number of tokens 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Temporal/modal inflection

Fig. 4. Verbal inflective variability of anar-se’n a fer punyetes referring to animate NPs. Total number of tokens: 82. Verbal inflective morphemes occurrence (in %): PRES. IND., 1.2%; PAST IND., 1.2%, FUT., 3.6%; COND., 1.2%; PRES. SUBJ., 37.8%; IMP., 36.5%; INF., 15.8%; GER., 2.4%.

What this suggests is that anar-se’n a fer punyetes, if referring to animate NPs, has increased considerably its subjectivity in comparison with its counterpart anar-se’n a fer punyetes referring to inanimate NPs. It also suggests that this increase of subjectivity has led to a subjectification process by which some very specific pragmatic inferences---that is, the speaker's anger towards the addressee and the desire of getting rid of her/him---have been encoded in the semantic meaning of the form.

This is consistent with the formal characteristics of the idiom. As Fig. 4 shows, when referring to animate NPs, anarse’n a fer punyetes is usually grounded by IMP morphemes, see (10a), and PRES.SUBJ morphemes, see (10b),22 and only very rarely by indicative morphemes, see (11). See also that examples in (10) do not provide any context for meaning and both of them contain overt deictic elements (the clitics te ‘you [2sg]’ and me ‘I’) to refer to the addressee.

Hence what we find here are two idiomatic VPs which originated from the very same taboo word, punyeta, but resulted in two very similar, but essentially different, lexical items. On the one hand, a idiomatic VP---anar-se’n a fer punyetes referring to inanimate NPs---which, like the idiomatic VP fer campana (section 4.1), can be grounded rather objectively. On the other hand, a highly subjective counterpart---anar-se’n a fer punyetes referring to animate NPs---which in most cases is grounded subjectively. The main difference, it is claimed here, is that the former has not undergone a subjectification process whereas the latter has.

4.2.2. The idiomatic VP parar el carro A similar increase of subjectivity has been observed in the metaphorical VP parar el carro (lit. to stop the cart), which in the appropriate communicative situation is produced and/or interpreted as a command to stop doing or saying something negative, see (12a). From a diachronic point of view, this idiomatic VP must have incorporated its metaphoric meaning quite recently as no instances of idiomatic tokens have been found in the XIX century data---see (12b) for a literal use of the VP. Probably this new, idiomatic, meaning was borrowed in the XX century from the Spanish counterpart parar el carro--with the same idiomatic meaning long described in Spanish dictionaries (DUE, CLAVE, DRAE). The Catalan parar el carro seems to have encoded not only this metaphoric meaning, but also the speaker's subjective use of the metaphor.

(12a) Ei, ei, ei, para el carro, vailet! D’on rediantre has tret que so´c un dolent, jo? hey, hey, hey, stop:2SG.IMP the cart, boy! From where the bloody hell have-you-heard that I am a baddy, I? ‘hey, hey, hey, wait a minute, boy! Who told you I am a baddy? (from the tales website http://www.valldelcorb.info/blogs/tribuna) (12b) Y maná parar lo carro; y baixaren los dos dintre l’aygua and [Philip the Apostle] asked [him] to stop:INF the cart and they two went down into the water [. . .] yl batejá [. . .] and [Philip the Apostle] baptised him ‘and [Philip the Apostle] asked him to stop the cart, and they went into the water and the Apostle baptised him’ (CTILC: Los fets dels apo´stols, by J.M. Prat i Colom)

22

In Catalan the IMP paradigm borrows morphemes from the PRES.SUBJ paradigm to refer to persons other than the 2SG/PL. This explains why the morpheme rate is higher than the IMP morpheme rate in Fig. 4.

PRES.SUBJ

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Total 70 number of tokens 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Pres. ind.

Past subj.

Imp.

Inf.

Temporal/modal inflection

Fig. 5. Verbal inflective variability of parar el carro. Total number of tokens: 75. Verbal inflective morphemes occurrence (in %): PRES. IND., 5.3%; PAST SUBJ., 2.6%; IMP., 82.6%; INF., 8.5%.

In all examples provided by Catalan dictionaries (DCC, GDLC, GD62, DSFF) this idiomatic VP carries out a command to stop saying or doing what the speaker regards as inconvenient. In my data set almost all tokens also exhibit the very same use. Other pragmatic uses would be expected given the metaphoric meaning of the formula, but the data show that this is rarely the case. As claimed in this paper, such regularity can only be attributed to a subjectification process by which its semantic meaning has been enriched, first, with a metaphor, and, second, with a highly subjective use of such metaphor.

The formal characteristics of the formula support this claim. Parar el carro is regularly uttered in imperative mood, that is, in a non-declarative mood. In most examples provided by dictionaries this idiomatic VP is grounded by 2.IMP morphemes, either singular or plural, and in my data the preference for the IMP morphemes is also overwhelming, see Fig. 5. Furthermore, such tendency to be grounded in imperative mood suggets that the verbal morpheme generally refers to the addressee, as (12a) illustrates. Hence no context for meaning is provided as the formula is enriched with information from the speech event.

It is worth pointing out that, in contrast with Ara hi corro (section 2.2), parar el carro cannot be claimed to be fossilized as far as its verbal inflection is concerned. It does admit verbal inflective morphemes other than the IMP morphemes. See, for instance (13a), in which parar el carro is reported indirectly by means of a 3SG.PAST.SUBJ morpheme. In fact, it even accepts 3SG.PAST.IND---hence declarative---morphemes, as (13b) illustrates.

(13a)

Si estava enfadat, només deixava de dir renecs quan li deien que parés el carro if he was furious, only he-stopped swearing when to-him-they-said that stop:3SG.PAST.SUBJ the cart ‘when he was furious, he only stopped swearing when he was told to stop’ (DSFF)

(13b)

[about a music shop owner's complains about music downloads] I aquí, el senyor, va parar el carro.

De fet, podia compartir [. . .] el motiu de l’emprenyament and here the man, stop:3SG.PAST.IND the cart. Actually, I-could share [. . .] the reason for the fury ‘and then the man stopped complaining. Actually I could understand why he was so furious’ (from the blog http://blocs.mesvilaweb.cat/ceskfreixas)

The examples in (12) and (13) indicate that the idiomatic VP parar el carro can, potentially at least, take a number of different inflective morphemes. Yet it seems to prefer highly subjective contexts, for (13b) is the only token in declarative mood found in my data set. As in the previous case studies, such reluctance to accept indicative morphemes provides good evidence that parar el carro has also undergone a subjectification process.

Interestingly, this contrasts with the slightly higher inflective variability of the Spanish counterpart of parar el carro (Spanish parar el carro). Spanish dictionaries also point out that this formulaic form is usually uttered in IMP mood (DUE, CLAVE, DGLE), but some objective tokens can be found in the Corpus de la Real Academia (CREA) and particularly on Spanish websites, e.g. (14). See also Fig. 6, in which the inflective variability of the Spanish parar el carro is higher than the Catalan form in Fig. 5 (see also Bladas, 2007).23

23 According to Álvarez de la Granja (1999:23), the Galician equivalent form ( parar o carro), also borrowed from Spanish, is also commonly uttered in IMP mood.

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Total 160 number of tokens 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

Temporal/modal inflection

Fig. 6. Inflective variability of Spanish parar el carro. Total number of tokens: 311. Verbal inflective morphemes occurrence (in %): PRES. IND., 5.8%; PAST IND., 3.8%; FUT., 0.9%; COND., 0.3%; PRES. SUBJ., 8%; PAST SUBJ., 0.9%; IMP., 48.5%; INF., 27.3%; GER., 1.6%; PART., 2.5%.

(14) Con la opa sobre Iberdrola [ACS] ha sabido parar el carro hasta que vengan mejores cuestas with the takeover on Iberdrola [ACS] was able to stop:INF the cart until that come better uphill slopes ‘ACS [Spanish company] stopped growing after its takeover of Iberdrola and waited for better times’ (from the business blog http://blogs.estrategiasdeinversion.com/) This suggests that the Spanish parar el carro is more similar to idiomatic VPs such as fer campana than to CRs. In contrast, its Catalan counterpart seems to be more subjective as in my data set it is grounded, almost exclusively, by means of non-indicative morphemes.24 This does not mean that the latter form has turned into a highly subjective CR like Ara hi corro. Rather it implies that, like anar-se’n a fer punyetes, this formulaic form exhibits a degree of subjectification which situates it closer to CRs than to idiomatic VPs. 4.3. Subjectification of ‘‘lexicalized sentence stems’’ Increase of subjectivity has also been detected in some of what Aijmer (1996:22) calls ‘‘lexicalized sentence stems’’, i.e. collocational frames consisting of a core with possible extensions and slots to account for highly conventionalized sequences (e.g. the English requesting stem MODAL you VP? for requests like Can you. . .?, Could you possibly. . .?, Will you please. . .?, and so forth) (Aijmer, 1996:148). In Catalan an interesting sentence stem to analyse is fer el favor (de Vinf) (lit. to do the favour [of Vinf]), typically used in exhortative utterances. Dictionaries point out that the VP fer el favor (lit. to do the favour) is a ‘‘formula to ask something politely’’ (GDLC), although in modern Catalan it is also used to strengthen the illocutionary force of directive utterances, e.g. commands like (15a). This sentence stem can be extended with the semimodal verb voler (to want), see (15b), or reduced by omitting the infinitival clause subordinated to the noun favor, see (15c).

(15a)

Decideix-te. . . i fes el favor de contestar-me quan et faci una pregunta make a decision. . . and do:2SG.IMP the favour of to answer-me when to-you-I-make a question ‘make a decision. . . and please answer me when I ask you a question’ (CTILC: Mirall trencat, by M. Rodoreda)

(15b)

Voleu fer el favor de callar d’una vegada? want:2PL.PRES.IND do the favour of to shut up right now? ‘please shut up?’

(DGLC)

(15c)

Vagi-se’n, faci el favor!

Respectin la difunta go away, do:3[=2]SG.IMP the favour! Respect the deceased ‘please, go away! please have some respect for the dead’ (CTILC: Quan mataven pels carrers, by J. Oller i Rabassa)

24 This may explain why in most Catalan dictionaries this formulaic form is labelled in IMP mood (Para el carro) (DCC, GDLC, GD62, DFF), whereas in some Spanish dictionaries it is labelled in INF ( parar el carro) (DRAE, DUE, CLAVE, DGLE) as any other idiomatic VP.

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450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

Temporal/modal inflection

Fig. 7. Verbal inflective variability of fer el favor (de Vinf). Total number of tokens: 1033. Verbal inflective morphemes occurrence (in %): PRES. IND., 2.1%; FUT., 6.5%; COND., 2.1%; PRES. SUBJ., 27.7%; PAST SUBJ., 4.3%; IMP., 38.5%; INF., 17.9%; GER., 0.1%.

The semantic evolution of this form shows that it has experienced an increase of subjectivity over time. In the XIX century data fer el favor (de Vinf) works either as a transparent formula to ask for something politely, see (16a), or as a formula to introduce a command, see (16b). By contrast, in the website data its polite meaning seems to be bleached as fer el favor (de Vinf) works mainly as a reinforcement of a command, see (16c). Furthermore, its shortened form fer el favor only goes with strong directive utterances, usually commands, see (16d). This particular evolution suggests that fer el favor (de Vinf) has undergone a subjectification process as described in this paper. The most transparent meaning of the formula has been replaced by a pragmatic meaning which, in the appropriate communicative situation, triggers an exhortative interpretation of the whole utterance.

(16a)

Vol fer lo favor, Africa, de tocar una melopéa? want you make:INF the favour, Africa, of to play a melody? ‘would you, Africa, be so kind as to play a melody?’ !

(CTILC: Africa!, by A. Ferrer i Codina) (16b)

Fasa el favor de pendre la po´rta, y per así no torne mes make:3[=2]SG.IMP the favour of to open the door, and around here you won’t be back ‘open the door and go out, you are not welcome anymore here’ (CTILC: L’ametrallaora Carlista [press])

(16c)

Paco, fes el favor de no pujar mes fotos del meu xalet Paco, make:2SG.IMP the favour of not to upload any more photos of my house at the beach ‘Paco, stop uploading photos of my house at the beach’ (adapted from Facebook)

(16d)

Simon, no enredis més la troca. . . fes el favor!

Simon, don’t mess anymore the skein. . . make:2SG.IMP the favour ‘Simon, don’t make things more difficult, please’ (from the local webite http://www.somvilafranca.cat)

The morphologic characteristics of the formula provide some good evidence of this evolution. My data set indicate that this sentence stem can be grounded, maintaining the same directive illocutionary force, by means of a variety of inflective morphemes, e.g. IMP (15a) [here repeated as (17a)], FUT (17b), COND (17c) and PAST.SUBJ (17d) morphemes, see Fig. 7. In fact, such inflective variability would suggest that this form has not experienced any subjectification process at all, in contrast with other Catalan polite formulae, e.g. the polite marker si us plau (please, lit. if you please) (see Alturo and Chodorowska-Pilch, 2005). Yet this inflective variability contrasts with the low number of tokens grounded by (a) indicative morphemes, as Fig. 7 clearly shows, and (b) morphemes other than 2SG/PL the morphemes.

Most tokens are grounded by 2.IMP morphemes, 2.SUBJ morphemes (which, in most cases, belong to the imperative paradigm; see fn. 22) and the INF morpheme, which usually occurs with the modal verb voler (to want) in interrogative

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utterances like (15b).25 Objective utterances like (18), grounded by indicative morphemes---and referring to a third person---were not found in my data set.

(17a)

Decideix-te. . . i fes el favor de contestar-me quan et faci una pregunta make a decision. . . and do:2SG.IMP the favour of to answer-me when to-you-I-make a question ‘make a decision. . . and please answer me when I ask you a question’ (CTILC: Mirall trencat, by M. Rodoreda)

(17b)

Ara, si us plau, faràs el favor de baixar a baix a fer-li una abraçada al Paris, now, please, do:2SG.FUT the favour of to go downstairs to give-to-him a hug to Paris, que està tan fotut com tu that he-is as sad as you ‘now, please, go downstairs and give Paris a hug, he is as sad as you’ (from Harry Potter fans blog http://www.harrypottercat.cat/)

(17c)

I si heu acabat, faríeu el favor de deixar-me omplir les galledes? and if you-have-finished, do:2PL.COND the favour of to let-me fill the buckets? ‘when you have finished [annoying me], please let me fill the buckets (CTILC: En Roc drapaire, by J. Vallverdú)

(17d)

Ens vam aturar i li vam demanar que fes el favor de pagar, com tothom we-stopped and to-him-we-asked that do:3SG.PAST.SUBJ the favour of to pay, as everyone else ‘we stopped and asked him to pay, just the same as everyone else’ (from the politics website http://www.reagrupament.cat)

?

(18)

[telling a costumer's complaint] No vam quedar contents fins que no van fer el favor de tornar-nos els diners not we-were satisfied until that not do:3PL.PAST.IND the favour of to return-to-us the money ‘we weren’t satisfied until we got our money back’ (constructed example)

Such a lack of objective tokens in the data is rather striking. First of all, an utterance like (18) is morphologically plausible since the sentence stem fer el favor (de Vinf) has not undergone fossilization, as the examples in (15)--(17) and Fig. 7 demonstrate. Hence no morphological reasons can account satisfactorily for the rarity of (18). Secondly, (18) is pragmatically relevant if produced and/or interpreted in the appropriate communicative situation, e.g. the narration of a customer's complaint. However, my data set show that utterances like (18) are, if anything, odd. Instead what the data suggest is that the sentence stem fer el favor (de Vinf) has undergone a subjectification process. This would explain why this sentence stem is regularly grounded by non-indicative morphemes and tends to refer to the addressee in the actual speech event, see the examples in (15)--(17), and only rarely to a third person of a past speech event, cf. (18).

4.4. Subjectification of non-fossilized CRs There are other formulaic forms which have not started a grammaticalization process but do exhibit some interesting grounding restrictions. This is the case of the CR No en parlem més (lit. do not we talk about it any more), which in the appropriate communicative situation can be produced and/or interpreted as an exhortative way of closing a discussion, having reached an agreement or not (see DSFF), see (19). In this example No en parlem més puts an end to a discussion

25 Tokens grounded like (15b) are an interesting exception. These tokens are grounded by FUT morphemes---hence indicative morphemes---but they must be interpreted as a command for they occur in a construction, (time expression) + 2SG/PL.FUT:verb, which may be strongly directive in some particular communicative situations, see (i). This is good evidence of the low correspondence that might be between form and subjectivity, as pointed out above (see section 3.2).

(i) [a mother scolding her son] Ara li demaràs perdo´ al teu germà Now to-him-2SG.FUT:say sorry to your brother ‘say sorry to your brother’

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about which region cooks fish best. Furthermore, as is usually the case in my data set, the formula is located after a strong statement (Each region cooks fish in its own way) and is connected to the previous discourse by means of the coordinative conjunction i (and).

(19)

Discutir aquestes coses seria d’una superfluïtat excessiva. Cada terra fa sa guerra. I to discuss these matters would be too superfluous. each land does its own war. and no en parlem més not about-it-talk:1PL.PRES.SUBJ anymore ‘To discuss this matter would be too superfluous. Each region cooks fish in its own way. We don’t need to talk about it any more’ (CTILC: El que hem menjat, by J. Pla)

Interestingly, this CR is fairly transparent from a semantic point of view and is only partly fixed, in that its major peculiarity is its preference for the verb parlar (to talk) rather than, e.g. discutir (to discuss)---no tokens with the latter verb have been found in my data set. However, it exhibits some peculiar syntactic features, the main one being that it rarely adds an optional dislocated PP to further specify the referent of the clitic en (about it). This is quite striking because the verb parlar subcategorizes a PP ( parlar de, to talk about) which, when replaced by a pronoun, is substituted by the clitic en (about) plus an optional, but very frequent, dislocated PP. This phrase makes clearer what the referent of the utterance is, as the PP d’aquest tema (about this issue) in the utterance No se’ni parla, d’aquest temai (nobody talks about this issue) shows. However, despite the high frequency of this PP in spoken language, No en parlem més seems to be reluctant to incorporate such PP when the form is used to close a discussion.

In fact, a few tokens of No en parlem més with the mentioned PP were found in my data set, but none of them can be interpreted as an authoritative way to put an end to a discussion. Instead they are used to switch to another topic rather smoothly. Compare (19), without the dislocated PP, to (20), with the dislocated PP. The former is placed after a strong statement and ends the discussion quite abruptly. In contrast, the latter only seeks to change topic as the current subject (the speaker's problems) is regarded as too unpleasant. There is no discussion to close in this particular case, just the wish to switch to a happier topic. In my data set, the dislocated PP only occurs in tokens similar to (20), that is, when the speaker wishes to shift to a new topic. When No en parlem més is used to put an end to a discussion, the dislocated PP simply does not occur.

(20)

Sola i sense diners. M’esgarrifa. . . Però no en parlem més de tot això. on my own and without money. I’m scared. . . But not about-iti-talk:1PL.PRES.SUBJ anymore about thisi.

No tolero que res ni ningú m’esguerri aquesta estona I don’t want anyone or anything to ruin this moment ‘On my own and without money. I’m scared. . . But let's talk about something else. I don’t want anyone or anything to ruin this moment’ (CTILC: Appassionata, by X. Benguerel)

Another syntactic peculiarity of No en parlem més is its reluctance to incorporate adjuncts. When used to close a discussion, this form does not incorporate any adjuncts (e.g. per avui, today; ja, anymore) in my data set. In contrast, when used to change topic, it does, cf. (21).

(21)

---Però més val no parlar-ne.

‘But it's better not to talk about it’ ---Sí, més val no parlar-ne; no en parlem més per avui Yes, [it's] better not to talk about it; not about-it-talk:1PL.PRES.SUBJ anymore today ‘Yes, it's better not to talk about it; we won’t talk about it anymore today’ (CTILC: Incerta glòria, by J. Sales)

Far from incidental, these syntactic differences suggest that two related, but essentially distinct, ‘‘expressions’’ are described here. On the one hand, a non-formulaic No en parlem més which is syntactically regular and is commonly used to switch to another topic, see (20) and (21). On the other hand, a formulaic No en parlem més which is syntactically defective and is generally used as an exhortative way to end a discussion, see (19). In the former case the pragmatic enrichment of the form is, if any, minimal, since its usual pragmatic use may be inferred from its literal meaning (‘do not talk about it anymore’). In contrast, the formulaic No en parlem més seems to have encoded in its meaning a number of local pragmatic inferences (that is, to put an end to a discussion in an authoritative way) as a result of a subjectification process.

The formal characteristics of the formula support this analysis. Firstly, the low occurrence of the optional dislocated PP indicates that no context for meaning needs to be provided as the formula---particularly the clitic en---is enriched with

[(Fig._8)TD$IG]

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949

Total 250 number of tokens 200 150 100 50 0 Past ind.

Fut.

Cond.

Pres. subj.

Temporal/modal inflection

Fig. 8. Verbal inflective variability of No en parlem més. Total number of tokens: 206. Verbal inflective morphemes occurrence (in %): PAST IND., 1.4%; FUT., 0.9%; COND., 0.4%; PRES. SUBJ., 97%.

information from the speech event. And, secondly, the form tends to be grounded in non-declarative mood. As Fig. 8 demonstrates, No en parlem més shows an overwhelming preference for PRES.SUBJ morphemes---which actually belong to the imperative paradigm (see fn. 22). Furthermore, the few tokens with other morphemes are not related to a previous vivid debate at all. Instead they just point out that nobody talked about a particular issue anymore, as (22a) illustrates.

Example (22b) reproduces the only token grounded in the past in which the formula may be interpreted as a way of closing a discussion (in this case a parents’ discussion about whether to adopt a child or not).

(22a)

Va sorgir la idea que en podríem fer un article [. . .] [però] la cosa va quedar aquí, i ja it came out the idea that about-it-we-could write an article [. . .] [but] the thing remained here, and yet no en vam parlar més not about-it-talk:1PL.PAST.IND anymore ‘we had the idea of writing an article together but we didn’t talk about it any more’ (from the blog http://tamatcarpeta.blogspot.com)

(22b)

[No hi havia més opcions], doncs el meu marit i jo no en vam parlar més i [there were no other options], so my husband and I not about-it-talk:1PL.PAST.IND any more and estem segurs al 100% del que fem we-are sure at 100% of what we-do ‘there were no other options, so my husband and I decided to go ahead, and now we are 100% sure about it’ (from the parenthood website http://forum.socpetit.cat)

Once again grammaticalization per se cannot explain why no more tokens similar to (22b) were found in the data. The indicative morphemes in (22) demonstrate that No en parlem més has not turned into, e.g. an interjection or a pragmatic marker. Furthermore, from a pragmatic point of view, example (22b) suggests that, provided with the appropriate pragmatic context, No en parlem més can also put an end to a discussion that took place in a past speech event.

Examples similar to (22b) would be expected to be more frequent in my data set, but actually they are not. Rather, as suggested earlier in this section, No en parlem més also seems to have undergone a subjectification process which clashes with any attempt to utter this particular formulaic form in a more objective way. The pronoun en (about it) must refer preferably to the issue discussed in the actual speech event, and the inflective morphemes to the actual discussants.

Any other grounding (to refer, e.g. to a past discussion) seems to be possible, but rare.

4.5. Subjectification of inflection-less CRs Any classification of CRs comprises a number of highly grammaticalized forms such as greetings (hello, goodbye), thanks-giving formulae (thanks a lot), and so forth (Aijmer, 1996; Wray and Perkins, 2000; Wray, 2002). Bearing in mind the observations made in the previous sections, it is worth considering whether CRs without verbs, and hence without verbal inflection, are grounded as subjectively as the CRs discussed so far. In this section the Catalan greeting formula hola will be analysed as an example of inflection-less CRs which have also undergone subjectification. The data suggest that there are good reasons to argue that this interjection is grounded as subjectively as the inflectional CRs seen in the previous sections.26

26 According to the DCVB, hola is a primary interjection borrowed from Spanish, which itself was borrowed from the Arabian secondary interjection wa-Allɑ̄h (lit. ‘for God!’). This evolution shows a prototypical case of pragmatic strengthening by which a regular phrase gradually replaces its lexical meaning by---initially local---pragmatic inferences, resulting in a completely different lexical form, in this case a greeting interjection.

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To begin with, the two following examples should be compared.

(23a)

[said to a friend who bumps into the speaker on the street] Hola! ‘hello!’

(23b)

[telling the addressee that the speaker bumped into a common friend] Me’l vaig trobar pel carrer l’altre dia, i hola me-into-him-bump:1SG.PAST.IND on the street the other day, and hello lit. ‘I bumped into him on the street the other day, and hello’

(23a) is completely acceptable, while (23b) sounds rather odd. In fact, no utterances similar to (23b) have been found in my data set. How can this be accounted for? First of all, it should be underlined that the oddity of (23b) cannot be due to syntactic reasons since sequences consisting of a sentence coordinated with an interjection are frequent in Catalan. In (24) the first example contains a sentence coordinated with the secondary interjection Déu n’hi do!, which expresses surprise (Sancho Cremades, 2003; Mayol, 2008), and the second example consists of a sentence coordinated with the primary interjection apa!, which usually has an exhortative or evaluative meaning. From a syntactic point of view, examples (23b) and (24) are alike. All three consist of a sentence followed by the coordinative conjunction i (and), and the interjection. However, the examples in (24) are completely acceptable whereas (23b) is not. Thus the rarity of the latter cannot be explained---exclusively at least---by syntactic reasons.

(24a)

Aquest any hi hem anat alguns socis de l’ACDA i déu n’hi do! this year there-we-went some members of the ACDA and not too bad ‘some members of ACDA [accordion association] went to [the accordion festival] this year, and we played quite well!’ (from the music website http://www.acordio.cat)

(24b)

Ens hem tapat ben tapadets amb els superllençols i apa! we-ourselves-covered well covered with the super-sheet and that's it! ‘we covered ourselves well with big sheets [on the uncomfortable night train] and managed to sleep’ (from the travel website http://www.travelpod.com)

Furthermore, (23b) cannot be accounted for by a pragmatic mismatch as the greeting formula is uttered in the appropriate context: two friends met at some point in the past and, as conventionally expected, they greeted each other. Given this context, the interjection hola is highly relevant. Yet the sequence in (23b) is far from being frequent in natural data, as instead a verb describing the greeting illocutionary force is required (cf. . . .i el vaig saludar [and I greeted him/I said hello to him]).

Rather the oddity of (23b) should be approached from another perspective. Wilkins’ (1992) work on interjections can be of great help at this point. This author analyses a range of interjections from different languages, and convincingly argues that they ‘‘are all context-bound items which require referential arguments to be provided by the immediate discourse context.

These arguments are coded in the semantic decomposition of interjections by the use of basic deictic elements such as I, you, here, etc.’’ (1992:153). That is, according to Wilkins, interjections need to be grounded in the deictic centre in order to be interpreted properly. Put differently, interjections can neither be grounded in the past nor in the future nor in a distant location, but in the here-and-now of the actual speech event, since their referents are to be found in the immediate communicative situation.27 Using Traugott and Dasher's (2002) terminology, interjections seem to be reluctant to any objective grounding for they are intrinsically subjective.

27 In Catalan, primary interjections do not take inflective morphemes and hence it is difficult to determine whether they are grounded in the deictic centre or not. However, there is good evidence that this particular interjection is usually grounded in the deictic centre. Hola can take the DAT pronoun a tothom (to everyone), which must refer to the participants of the actual speech event (i), not to the participants of, e.g. a past speech event, cf. (ii).

(i)

(ii)

[entering a living room full of people having a party] Hola a tothom! hello to everyone ‘hello, everyone!’ [telling that s/he entered a living room full of people having a party] Vaig entrar al menjador i *hola a tothom ‘I went into the living room and *hello to everyone’

The ungrammaticality of (ii) suggests that the interjection hola is grounded in the deictic centre even though no explicit deictic elements are incorporated. This is consistent with Wilkins’ (1992) claim that primary interjections are grounded in the deictic centre by default.

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Thus, if Wilkins’ observations are right, the oddity of (23b) can be accounted for by the mismatch between the objective grounding of the previous utterance (me’l vaig trobar pel carrer l’altre dia [I bumped into him on the street the other day], which provides context for the interpretation of hola and is grounded in declarative mood) and the encoded subjective meaning of the greeting interjection, which can only be interpreted in the here-and-now of the speech event. Being the second member of a coordination resulting from a highly accessible script (that is, bumping into a friend and greeting him/her), hola inherits the objective perspective of the previous utterance similarly to that which happens to coordinated utterances such as She had a baby and got married vs. She got married and had a baby (Carston, 2002:222; Blakemore, 2005; Blakemore and Carston, 2005). This, however, seems to be in conflict with the encoded subjective meaning of the interjection. Hola collides with the objective grounding inherited from the previous utterance and the whole sequence becomes rather odd, if not unacceptable.

Such mismatch becomes straightforward when the interjection hola in (23b) is compared to Déu n’hi do, in (24a), and apa, in (24b). All three interjections follow an objective utterance, but only hola is interpreted objectively and fails to be acceptable. In (23b) the speaker tells that s/he bumped into a friend in the street and---as people usually do---s/he greeted him: given that context, hola is immediately grounded in the past. In contrast, Déu n’hi do and apa are not temporally linked to the previous utterance as they are essentially evaluative interjections---in (24a) Déu n’hi do evaluates positively the participation of the musicians in the festival, and in (24b) apa expresses resignation towards the uncomfortable travel circumstances---and thus they are rather independent from temporal linkages. Whatever the grounding of the previous utterance is, the evaluative content of the interjection is not affected.

In summary, what seems to account for the rarity of (23b) is neither its syntactic structure nor a lack of pragmatic relevance, but rather the unusual objectification of hola. In being coordinated with an objective utterance, the greeting formula is objectified. This clashes with the highly subjective character of the interjection. For our purposes here, examples like (23b) demonstrate that the interjection hola and CRs alike are affected by subjectification in the same way as the sentential CRs seen in the previous sections. None of them can be easily objectified due to their highly subjective, encoded, content. The only difference is that hola is grounded implicitly in the ‘‘actual deictic centre’’ (Vandelanotte, 2004)---in fact, the most subjective grounding---rather than being grounded explicitly by means of verbal inflective morphemes.

5. General discussion This paper began by pointing out that most Catalan dictionaries make no clear distinction between idiomatic VPs like fer campana and what are broadly called ‘‘expressions’’, including what some scholars have labelled ‘‘conversational routines’’, e.g. Ara hi corro (section 1). To some extent, this lack of terminological precision is attributable to a theoretical gap in the pragmatic approach to phraseology, and particularly to CRs (section 1.2). Here some of these formulaic forms have been analysed taking into consideration the concept of subjectification, as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010), so as to better characterize this rather vague category and to better distinguish them from idiomatic VPs. As the case studies presented above suggest (sections 2--4), subjectification is a significant concept which can be used to distinguish CRs from idiomatic VPs in Catalan. The analysis of CRs like Ara hi corro (section 2.2) indicates that they are quite different from idiomatic VPs like fer campana as far as their grounding is concerned (section 4.1). Generally speaking, CRs cannot be grounded as objectively as idiomatic VPs. This suggests that the former have undergone a subjectification process whereas the latter have not. In fact, both kinds of forms can undergo a subjectification process, but the data show that CRs tend to go much further along this path. The major formal effect in Catalan is that CRs, in contrast with idiomatic VPs, display low verbal inflective variability, even though they are not necessarily grammaticalized, as No en parlem més (section 4.4) suggests. Another important effect is that CRs in Catalan tend to present overt deictic elements and occur in utterances which provide little context for meaning, as this kind of formulae tend to be enriched with information from the speech event. Some CRs, however, go even further and undergo a grammaticalization process, including morphological fossilization. The CR Ara hi corro can be regarded as a prototypical example in this respect for it has developed progressively into a form closer to an interjection.

In this vein, subjectification has been revealed to be a useful tool to draw a line---rather thin sometimes---between two kinds of ‘‘expressions’’ that Catalan dictionaries do not distinguish clearly. For instance, the GDLC includes the CR Ara hi corro in the entry for the verb co´rrer (to run, to rush) along with the idiomatic VP co´rrer com un llamp (to run fast, lit. to run like a lightening), among many others. However, nowhere is it told explicitly that Ara hi corro usually takes a 1SG.PRES.IND morpheme, and no examples of its prototypical pragmatic function are provided. Without such relevant information, nothing prevents a L2 learner from producing an utterance like (8), repeated in (25), which is grammatically possible, but far from being acceptable from a pragmatic point of view.

(25)

[complaining about a mean friend] Li vaig dir que em deixés deu euros, però em va dir que aleshores hi corria to-her/him-I-asked to me-lend ten euros, but s/he-said that then there-rush:3SG.PAST.IND ‘I asked her/him to lend me ten euros, but s/he said that s/he wouldn’t’ (constructed example)

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From a more theoretical perspective, the analysis of CRs taking into account the concept of subjectification has a number of implications. First of all, the case studies presented in this paper suggest that subjectification may have important effects beyond pragmatic markers and other well-known pragmatic particles analysed in the framework of Grammaticalization Theory (section 2). As seen in the previous sections, a variety of Catalan formulaic forms have also started a subjectification process for they cannot be easily objectified. This is quite straightforward in forms like Ara hi corro as they have almost decategorized into interjections and are on the edge of fossilization. However, some grounding constraints have also been observed in idiomatic VPs (e.g. anar-se’n a fer punyetes [section 4.2.1], parar el carro [section 4.2.2]), sentence stems (e.g. fer el favor de Vinf [section 4.3]), non-fossilized CRs (e.g. No en parlem més [section 4.4]) and even in inflection-less CRs (e.g. hola [section 4.5]). The extent to which these forms have undergone subjectification varies significantly from one to the other, but the fact that they are all reluctant to an objective grounding suggests that the effects of subjectification spread well beyond grammaticalization.

In fact, it is not clear at all which forms may undergo subjectification. So far this concept has been applied to pragmatic markers, interjections, modal particles and, in the present paper, to some particular CRs. Nevertheless, there are many other formulaic forms in which subjectification seems to have significant consequences. Proverbs, which are regarded as forms similar to CRs by some scholars (Nattinger and DeCarrico, 1992; Van Lancker, 2004), are a good example in this respect.28 For instance, the Catalan proverb No es pot dir blat fins que no és al sac i ben lligat (lit. you cannot say wheat until it is in a well-closed bag; approx. English Don’t count your chickens (before they are hatched)) is usually produced and/or interpreted as a way of protecting the addressee from over-optimism; as in (26), extracted from an interview with a volunteer fire-fighter.

(26)

Interviewer: Aquest any sembla que els boscos no patiran tant a l’estiu ‘it seems that next summer forests won’t suffer so many fires as last year’ Fire-fighter: Mai no es pot dir blat fins que no és al sac never not it-to-be-able:3SG.PRES.IND to say:INF wheat until that not to be:3SG.PRES.IND in the bag i ben lligat and well closed ‘don’t count your chickens’ (from the local magazine http://www.mediambient.terrassa.org/updocs/essencies_15.pdf)

As was observed in relation to CRs, no morphological or syntactic reasons prevent this proverb from being grounded more objectively and preserving its idiomatic content at the same time. See as an example (27a), in which the context for meaning is provided (Firemen were very prudent), the optional modal verb voler (to want) is removed, and PAST.IND morphemes replace the usual PRES.IND morphemes. Importantly, it should be pointed out that, like many CRs, this proverb has not fossilized at all, for it does display some lexical, syntactic and inflective variability, cf. (27b) and (27c). However, no tokens similar to (27a) have been found in my data set.29 (27a)

[in a newspaper report about the firemen’ tasks to extinguish a big forest fire] Els bombers eren molt prudents i no van dir blat fins que no va ser al sac i firemen were very prudent and not to say:3PL.PAST.IND wheat until that not it-was in the bag and ben lligat well closed approx. ‘firemen were very prudent and didn’t count their chickens’ ‘firemen were very prudent and did not say that the fire was over until it was totally put out’ (constructed example)

Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) classify proverbs as what they call ‘‘lexical phrases’’, i.e. linguistic constructions which are associated with a particular (pragmatic) interpretation, e.g. the__ er the __er (used only in some proverbs, e.g. The sooner the better). However, they also include in this category some common utterances such as My name is. . . or What time is it?, which are not completely fixed. Van Lancker (2004:8) describes proverbs as expressions carrying ‘‘as part of their meaning, an array of attitudes, values, and effect’’. In contrast, other authors claim that proverbs are context-independent (Zuluaga, 1980; Alexander, 1984; Carter, 1987; Corpas, 1996).

29 Interestingly, this contrasts with the greater grounding variability of the English counterpart Don’t count your chickens (before they are hatched). Although in most dictionaries this proverb is grounded in its imperative form (see CDO, OD, MD), a search in the Collins Wordbanks reveals that this form can be grounded in many other ways apart from an imperative (e.g. We were counting our chickens. But he was not the reason we lost). This suggests that the English Don’t Count you Chickens, in contrast with its Catalan counterpart, works more similarly to an idiomatic VP than to a proverb.

28

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(27b) No diguis blat que no sigui al sac i ben lligat not to say:2SG.IMP wheat that not to be:3SG.PRES.SUBJ in the bag and well closed ‘don’t count your chickens’ (DGLC) (27c) No es pot dir blat fins que sigui dins el sac, i encara ben lligat not it-to be able:3SG.PRES.IND to say:INF wheat until that to be:3SG.PRES.SUBJ in the bag, and yet well closed ‘don’t count your chickens’ (CTILC: Tele-Estel) Example (27a), along with the case studies presented earlier in this paper, suggest that the concept of subjectification is more powerful than Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010) initially predicted. More precisely, my data set indicate that subjectification has important effects beyond widely studied forms such as pragmatic markers or modal particles (section 2.1). In the case of Catalan CRs, subjectification prevents these formulaic forms from being grounded as objectively as freely generated utterances or even as other formulaic forms, e.g. idiomatic VPs. This is closely related to the vivid controversy in the field of Grammaticalization Theory regarding the theoretical status of subjectification within the grammaticalization process. Most scholars regard subjectification as a phenomenon independent but strongly related to grammaticalization (Brinton and Traugott, 2005; Cuyckens et al., 2010:6; Traugott, 2007, 2010:39--41; Traugott and Dasher, 2002), whereas others argue that the pragmatic strengthening undergone by some pragmatic particles, e.g. pragmatic markers, can be better accounted for by means of an independent process of ‘‘pragmaticization’’ (Erman and Kotsinas, 1993; Dostie, 2004; Aijmer, 2002, 2007). The main purpose of this paper was not arguing in favour of, or against, one of these two broad positions (see Degand and Vandenbergen, 2011; Diewald, 2011). However, the data presented here support the idea that subjectification may, in some particular cases, follow its own path. The CRs analysed in the previous sections suggest that some Catalan formulaic forms undergo subjectification without turning into a different grammatical category, e.g. into a pragmatic marker. The sentential stem fer el favor de Vinf (section 4.3) and the low-idiomatic CR No en parlem més (section 4.4) provide good evidence of this particular evolution.

Like idiomatic VPs, these CRs exhibit some inflective variability and hence cannot be said to have grammaticalized; however, unlike idiomatic VPs, they are not usually objectified. They do preserve their inflective flexibility, but the data show that they are rarely objectified even when an appropriate pragmatic context is provided. Such grounding constraints cannot be attributed to a grammaticalization process only, but rather to a subjectification process.

Nevertheless, grammaticalization and subjectification are not claimed here to be completely unrelated processes.

Rather, as far as CRs are concerned, subjectification is suggested to have broader---but also much more subtle---effects than grammaticalization. Again, comparing the CRs No en parlem més and Ara hi corro is highly illustrative. No en parlem més preserves its full verbal inflection but only rarely is grounded objectively, which suggests that this formulaic form, though being highly subjective, has not followed a grammaticalization path. In contrast, Ara hi corro has gone much further. This CR is also highly subjective, but, as its lack of inflective variability suggests, it is also about to turn into an interjection---in a similar way as other well-known Catalan interjections developed from freely generated clauses (e.g. Déu n’hi do [Sancho Cremades, 2003]). Using Company Company's (2006a:388) words with respect to similar Spanish forms, the CR Ara hi corro has turned into ‘‘a subjective discourse-pragmatic marker, a kind of unitary discourse particle’’.

To sum up, in light of the data presented and analysed in this paper, some Catalan CRs can be said to have undergone, firstly, subjectification and, secondly, grammaticalization. What is less likely to happen is that these formulaic forms and others like them undergo a grammaticalization process before undergoing subjectification.

6. Conclusion The starting point of this paper was the classic definition of ‘‘conversational routine’’ proposed by Coulmas (1981), according to which the most distinctive feature of these---admittedly vague---formulaic forms is their association with a particular communicative situation. Similar intuitive definitions were also seen in general dictionaries with respect to ‘‘expressions’’ such as the English interjection hello. The aim of this paper was to reduce the intuition behind such definitions by taking into consideration the concept of subjectification as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010). This concept has proved to be highly relevant within the field of Grammaticalization Theory as most items which undergo a grammaticalization process exhibit a notable increase of subjectivity. In fact, subjectification has turned out to be one of the major semantic changes involved in grammaticalization processes.

However, the case studies presented here suggest that subjectification has deep effects well beyond grammaticalization. More precisely, the Catalan CRs analysed above demonstrate that subjectification may work independently from grammaticalization in that some CRs may be highly subjective---in Traugott and Dasher's (2002) terms---without turning into, for example, interjections or pragmatic markers. CRs like parar el carro and No en parlem més

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cannot be claimed to have undergone grammaticalization since their verbal inflective morphology remains intact, yet they are still reluctant to undergo objectification. From a pragmatic point of view, nothing prevents these CRs from taking, for example, past indicative morphemes in highly objective contexts, but natural occurring data show that this is rarely the case. This suggests that some CRs in Catalan have undergone a subjectification process which does not necessarily involve grammaticalization.

Ultimately the results of this study do not contradict the role of subjectification in grammaticalization processes as defined by Traugott and Dasher (2002) and Traugott (2010). However, the findings presented here suggest that subjectification may have more pervasive effects than these authors initially predicted.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which contributed considerable improvements in this paper. He would also like to thank Aisling O’Boyle for her inspiring comments on an earlier version of the paper, and Lluís Payrato´, Núria Alturo and Neus Nogué for their advice and encouragement throughout my research. Needless to say, the responsibility for any errors remains my own.

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