Abstract :
[en] This paper focuses on a set of English clausal expressions containing the negative indefinite determiner no + noun, as in (1a)-(2a), and their adverbial counterparts, e.g. no wonder (1b), or elliptical variants of clausal expressions, e.g. no need (2b). Both structural types can be used to qualify States-of-Affairs (SoAs), in which case they show grammatical use rather than lexical use (cf. Boye & Harder 2012). In (1), both the clausal (1a) and the adverbial (1b) no wonder structures attitudinally qualify their propositions miratively (DeLancey 2001: 369) as wholly unsurprising, whilst in (2) the clausal and elliptical expressions with no need express a modal qualification of a state-of-affairs, viz. absence of necessity (Van linden et al. 2011). The other strings that will be studied are no chance (Van linden & Brems 2017, 2018), no way (Davidse et al. 2014) and no doubt (Davidse et al. 2015).
(1) (a) It’s no wonder Norwegians hunt whale. There’s nothing else left to catch. (WB)
(b) The relatives were very annoyed, no wonder, and it caused friction in the family (WB)
(2) (a) Decker: Well, look. Why don't we reschedule for, say, Tuesday?
Bill: Oh, there is no need to reschedule. We can just carry on while […]. (CASO)
(b) Woman: She’s got a bit of a crisis on her hands right now. You want to keep holding?
Jake: Uh -- tell you what -- no need. I’m sure she’s going to be on her way home
soon, so just tell her that Jake called, ok? (Corpus of American Soap Operas)
We will investigate which types of meaning the patterns express (lexical or grammatical? (see Boye & Harder (2012) for criteria); and if grammatical: which type?), and how these relate to (i) the formal type of complement clause in the case of the clausal structures, and (ii) the availability of adverbial or elliptical uses (the latter being variants of clausal structures). The hypotheses associated with these questions assume a functional analysis of the clause (e.g. Hengeveld 1989), and relate to Nuyts’s (2005) functional hierarchy of state-of-affairs (SoA) qualifications.
First we hypothesize that the distribution of to-infinitival complements, which lack deictic tense marking and typically have no subject expressed with them (cf. Bolinger 1967: 351-9) is restricted to qualificational meanings that apply to potential SoAs, such as dynamic and deontic modality (cf. Verstraete 2007: 42-46; Van linden 2012: ch. 2); the to-clause in (2a), for instance, refers to an unnecessary SoA (dynamic modality). By contrast, that-clauses are not semantically restricted and can thus be used with strings whose qualificational meaning applies to propositions, such as epistemic and mirative meaning; examples like (3) suggest that the same goes for of-gerundial complements, with (3) conveying epistemic meaning.
(3) [They] may dream of a theocratic US, but there is no chance of this coming about. (WB)
Second, we put forward that the level of clause structure the qualificational meaning of the no + noun string applies to also determines the availability of adverbial or elliptical uses. When the qualificational meaning applies to propositions, the non-clausal counterparts function as adverbials, typically disjunct adverbials (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 615), featuring also positional flexibility (cf. (1b)) (Gentens et al. 2016). By contrast, when it applies to SoAs, the non-clausal counterparts are merely elliptical matrices (so in fact covertly clausal structures), which cannot shift position (cf. (2b)) (No need to keep holding; *to keep holding, no need). In such cases, the meaning of the (elliptical) matrix is assumed to be secondary to the SoA denoted in the complement clause (rather than to the discourse, as in (1b)), much like modal auxiliaries are (grammatically) secondary to their main verb.
References
Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. The imperative in English. In: Jakobson, R. (ed.), To Honor Roman Jakobson, 335–362. The Hague: MdG.
Boye, Kasper & Peter Harder. 2012. Grammatical Status and Grammaticalization. Language 88: 1–44.
Davidse, Kristin, An Van linden, Jacob Lesage & Lieselotte Brems. Negation, grammaticalization and subjectification: the development of polar, modal and mirative no way-constructions, ICEHL18, 14-18 July 2014, University of Leuven.
Davidse, Kristin, Simon De Wolf & An Van linden. 2015. The development of (there/it is / I have) no doubt expressing modal and interactional meaning. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 16 (1): 25-58..
DeLancey, Scott. 2001. The mirative and evidentiality. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 369-382.
Gentens, Caroline, Ditte Kimps, Kristin Davidse, Gilles Jacobs, An Van linden & Lieselotte Brems. 2016. Mirativity and rhetorical structure: The development and prosody of disjunct and anaphoric adverbials with ‘no’ wonder. In Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer & Arne Lohmann (eds.), Outside the Clause. Form and function of extra-clausal constituents, 125-156 [Studies in Language Companion Series 178]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hengeveld, Kees. 1989. Layers and operators in Functional Grammar. Journal of Linguistics 25: 127–157.
Nuyts, Jan. 2005. The modal confusion: On terminology and the concepts behind it. In Alex Klinge and Henrik Høeg Müller (eds.), Modality: Studies in form and function. London: Equinox. 5–38.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Van linden, An. 2012. Modal adjectives: English deontic and evaluative constructions in diachrony and synchrony [Topics in English Linguistics 75]. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Van linden, An, Kristin Davidse & Lieselotte Brems. Have/be no need: the interaction between negation and modality in verbonominal pathways of change. ICHL 20, Osaka, 25-30 July 2011.
Van linden, An & Lieselotte Brems. 2017. Talmy’s “greater modal system”: fitting in verbo-nominal constructions with chance(s). Seventh International Conference of the French Association for Cognitive Linguistics (AFLiCo 7), University of Liège, 31 May – 3 June 2017.
Van linden, An & Lieselotte Brems. 2018. It was chance’s chance to become polyfunctional in the modal domain. Twentieth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL20), University of Edinburgh, 27-31 August 2018.
Verstraete, Jean-Christophe. 2007. Rethinking the coordinate-subordinate dichotomy: Interpersonal grammar and the analysis of adverbial clauses in English [Topics in English Linguistics 55]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
