2018d Four Directionalities For Grammat

Table of contents
EDITORIAL
Editors' corner 317
ARTICLES
Toe origin of English clause-initial quotative inversion 318

Anna Cichosz
Four directionalities for grammaticalization: Evidence for new 356

diachronic paths
Concepción Company Company
Swimming against the typological tide or paddling along with language 388
change? Dispreferred structures and diachronic biases in affix ordering
Bitan Grossman and Stéphane Polis
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Four directionalities for
grammaticalization
Evidence for new diachronic paths

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
This article offers an analysis and systematization of the relationship

between directionality and grammaticalization and develops an innovative
proposal regarding a new type of directionality. The article proposes four
types of directionality in grammaticalization: A. down, B. up, C. neither
down nor up, and D. up and down. The first three types are very well stud-
ied, but the last has been overlooked in the theoretical literature. The article
analyzes directionality D in depth. It is a directionality that is very similar to
a round trip: an up in the cline is followed by a down in the cline. First, the
form or construction leaves sentence grammar and enters into periphery
grammar, acquiring a new category and a discourse meaning, generally a
subjective one; later, the form comes back into sentence grammar, but
always re-enters as a different category from the etymological source. This
process appears to be round trip directionality. This round trip process con-
stitutes a fourth type of directionality in grammaticalization. Directionality
D requires its own status, distinct from the sum of directionalities A and B,
due to its specific source and due to the fact that the reinsertion into the
sentence grammar is in a specific category. It has its own individual distrib-
ution and a characteristic and innovative circular path. The evidence of this
directionality presented in this article comes from Spanish, but this path
very likely also generalizes to other languages.
Keywords: directionality, grammaticalization, round trip directionality,

cline
1. Introduction
Directionality and grammaticalization have been closely associated from the very
beginning of grammaticalization’s relevance on the grammatical scene as a com-
mon framework for the analysis of diachronic processes, starting in the 1980s.
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.17032.com
Journal of Historical Linguistics 8:3 (2018), pp. 356–387. issn 2210-2116 | e‑issn 2210-2124
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Four directionalities for grammaticalization 357
Directionality has, explicitly or implicitly, been a defining feature of grammat-

icalization in most papers on the topic, because changes in grammaticalization
always follow diachronic paths with specific structural patterns. Diverse direction-
alities have been studied in-depth in many languages; however, a particular type
of directionality has been ignored in the specialized literature.
The main goal of this article is to introduce and analyze a type of directionality
that has not been previously described. This article proposes four types of direc-
tionality in grammaticalization processes: A. down, B. up, C. neither down nor up,
and D. up and down, a directionality that resembles a round trip. The first three are
well known and have been extensively described for many languages; however, the
last one has been overlooked in the specialized literature. The evidence presented
here for these four types of directionality comes from Spanish, but these patterns
most likely generalize also to other languages. Two additional goals of this article
are, first, to give support to directionality as an important topic in diachrony and,
second, to systematize the possibilities of directionality in grammaticalization.
Other aims of this study, which are derived from the data, are as follows. First,
I intend to show that diachronic paths are more complex than simply down or up,
which are the directionalities that have been best exemplified in theoretical and
descriptive literature; diachronically, grammaticalization is capable of moving in
any of four directions. Second, I attempt to confirm that mutual conditioning
or balance between form and meaning and constant interaction of language lev-
els characterize any syntactic-semantic diachronic process. Third, I aim to show
the basic gradualness of change. Change of any direction advances through many
imperceptible micro-changes or phases; these changes are both chronological and
of distribution types. Fourth, I attempt to corroborate that linguistic forms ante-
cede changes and that, therefore, in grammatical change, there is no creation
ex novo; rather, previously-existing lexical, discourse, or grammatical material is
renewed in some way in the process of change. There is no absolute loss from
this perspective, because there is always a syntactic way to express given semantic
content.
This article is organized in six sections. Section 1 is the introduction. In
Section 2, a very brief state of the art is given, focusing on some well-known
facts regarding the relationship between directionality and grammaticalization. In
Section 3, the four directionalities of grammaticalization are listed. In this section,
I will give an operating definition of grammar; in this definition, I will distinguish
between two domains, sentence grammar and periphery grammar, as separating
these two domains is necessary in order to explain the diachronic behavior of
the four directionalities of grammaticalization. Section 4, the longest section, dis-
cusses each of the four directionalities. Sections 4.1 through 4.3 each examine only
one paradigmatic or typical diachronic example for their respective directional-
ities, given that they represent well-documented diachronic paths; Section 4.4 is
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dedicated to an analysis of the fourth type of directionality in detail. The conclu-

sions in Section 5 close out the article, briefly presenting some reflections about
language change and directionality.
2. Brief state of the art: Grammaticalization and directionality
Certain well-known facts pertaining to the relationship between directionality

and grammaticalization have been accepted in the specialized literature for
decades. This article is primarily concerned with ten of these theoretical aspects.
1. The traditional or standard definition of grammaticalization implies unidirec-
tionality. Grammaticalization, in the traditional view, is a process by which
a lexical form or construction in a specific distribution and context assumes
a grammatical function or by which an already-grammatical form or con-
struction in a specific distribution acquires an even more grammatical one.
Many authors have subscribed to this characterization (Meillet 1965 [1912],
Kuryłowicz 1965: 69, Givón 1979, Heine & Reh 1984: 20–22, Heine, Claudi &
Hünnemeyer 1991: 3, 226, Lehmann 1995 [1982]: Chapter 2, Geurts 2000, Trau-
gott 2001, Heine 2003a, Hopper & Traugott 2003 [1993]: Chapter 1, among
many others).
2. Typical paths of unidirectionality include the following: lexical form > gram-
matical form; free forms > bound forms; phrase/content word > functional
word/morpheme; optional use > obligatory use; peripheral grammar > core
grammar; syntax > morphology; loose parataxis > tight syntax.
3. In sum, lexical or less-grammaticalized items and constructions are pressed
into service in order to express more-grammatical functions; because of that,
the directionality is considered a downgrading in the path. The diachronic
process is always asymmetrical, because the change goes in only one direction:
less bound > more bound. Traditional grammaticalization may thus be char-
acterized as descending the path, channel, or cline of grammaticalization; it
can be viewed as a demotion in the language level at which a form or con-
struction occurs, because the entity begins in the lexicon or/and in discourse
and ends in the syntax or the morphology of a language. The unidirectionality
of grammaticalization causes a “reduction of the speaker’s freedom in using
a linguistic sign” (Lehmann 1995 [1982]: 190) and an enrichment of linguistic
signs in terms of abstraction and schematicity.
4. Some works have defended unidirectionality as an explanatory principle
underlying grammaticalization (Haspelmath 1999, 2004 and references cited
therein). Explanatory force for unidirectionality comes, mainly, from three
sources. First, unidirectionality constitutes strong evidence for language

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reconstruction (Haspelmath 2004: 24). Second, unidirectionality is backed up

by a strong statistical empirical evidence, as is the most frequent type of
change in grammaticalization: “more than 90% of grammaticalizations are
down in the cline” (Givón 2009, also Haspelmath 2004, Traugott 2001, 2003a,
2003b, Ziegeler 2003: 254, 2004). Third, unidirectionality has robust typologi-
cal support: all languages have examples of downgrading changes.
5. Theoretically, the explanatory force of unidirectionality was a key point for
refuting criticism made of grammaticalization by formal linguists. At the
beginning of the 2000s, the status of grammaticalization as a theory was
strongly questioned. Critics stated that grammaticalization is not a diachronic
grammatical process differing from other changes; nor does it have “a distinct
set of principles for explanation” (Newmeyer 2001; see also Campbell 2001a,
several of the articles culled in Campbell 2001b, and articles in Fisher, Norde
& Perridon 2004).
6. In response to these criticisms, some functionalists posed that unidirection-
ality guarantees predictability, which means that grammaticalization might
have certain properties of a theory or constitute a theory in itself (see Lind-
ström 2004 for a review). Grammaticalization is considered a “subset of cross-
linguistically recurring changes” that explains how grammatical changes –
including formal, distributional and semantic-pragmatic changes – can
progress (Traugott 2001); it is also considered a “macro-change” (Company
2003, 2012).
7. As interest in grammaticalization phenomena increased, a large number of
counterexamples to unidirectionality began to surface. These examples show
a direction of change opposite to the one postulated by the framework of tra-
ditional grammaticalization. Counterexamples can have the following direc-
tions of change: forms having syntactic grammatical status > forms having
less grammatical status; bound forms > free forms; grammatical words >
lexical words; univerbation > deverbation; morphology > syntax; syntax >
discourse; narrow scope > wide scope; sentence grammar status > similar sen-
tence grammar status. There is agreement that non-downgrading changes also
imply an increase in abstraction and schematicity, like downgrading ones do.
8. Two types of non-downgrading changes, in particular, are central to ques-
tioning the principle of unidirectionality in grammaticalization. The first type
involves changes showing upgrading in the cline, in which forms weaken
their grammatical ties and acquire grammatical isolation, autonomy and, in
general, discourse functions. The second type involves changes that show no
directionality, labelled as “neutral” in terms of their directionality (Fischer
2010), in which forms recategorize without creating stronger grammatical
dependencies. Due to examples showing these types of directionality, from

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2000 onwards, there have been strong criticisms to unidirectionality (Janda

2001, Van der Auwera 2002, Heine 2003b, Joseph 2005, Luraghi 2005, Com-
pany 2008, Norde 2009, Fischer 2010, Norde, Beijering & Lenz 2013, Breban
& Kranich 2014a, Olmen, Cuyckens & Ghesquiére 2017, among many others).
9. There are many labels for upgrading and non-directional changes: “degram-
maticalization,” “antigrammaticalization,” “neutral grammaticalization,”
“refunctionalization,” “regrammaticalization,” “postgrammaticalization,” “lat-
eral shift,” “non-directional shift,” “secondary grammaticalization,”1 “exten-
sion of meaning,” “spreading of contexts,” “capitalization,” “subjectification,”
and even simply “grammaticalization.” These labels are not entirely uniform
either in meaning or in the mechanisms they describe, but all of them are used
to analyze different types of non-downgrading changes. Without a doubt, this
plethora of names is a symptom of the theoretical uncertainty regarding this
class of changes that serve as counterexamples to unidirectionality and the
uncertainty regarding the degree to which they are internally homogeneous
as a class.
10. The diversity of directionalities leads to questions regarding what grammat-
icalization is, even causing some to dismiss the concept as useless (Joseph
2005, Luraghi 2005).
11. Scholars have increasingly defined grammaticalization in complementary
ways and have begun to consider other perspectives to enrich and refine the
concept of grammaticalization; however, directionality has not properly fea-
tured in this research. For instance, researchers have examined the creation
of new categories and of new exponents of already existent categories (Givón
1991, Breban & Kranich 2014a, 2014b). There has been research into the
conventionalization of tendencies or routines that have emerged from dis-
course – that is, linguistic phenomena that operate at the text or discourse
level of any given stage of language to achieve special expressive effects which
become, over time, conventional grammatical structures that lack any prag-
matic conditioning (Hopper 2001, Traugott 2001, Traugott & Dasher 2002,
Company 2006, Diewald 2011, Torres Cacoullos 2016, and many others).
Researchers have also examined the emergence of new grammatical systems
(Hopper 1987, 1998, 2011, Frajzyngier 2010, Hurford 2012: Chapter 7) and have
constructed usage-based models that look into the role of frequency, prag-
1. Secondary grammaticalization is understood in two ways: “Cases of grammaticalization

affecting elements that already have grammatical function and proceed to develop a new gram-
matical function… later stage processes in grammaticalization” (Breban & Kranich 2014a), and
“the reanalysis of markers of one syntactic category into another one” (Givón 1991); both may
involve upgrading changes. For a revision of the concept of secondary grammaticalization, cf.
Breban & Kranich (2014b).
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matics, cognition, and construction grammar in grammaticalization (Bybee

2010, Boye & Harder 2012, Traugott & Trousdale 2013, Norde & Beijering
2014, Winter-Froemel 2014, Trousdale 2014).
12. The present state of the art in grammaticalization theory is, essentially, as fol-
lows. Two major directionalities, down and up, have been recognized. Other
types of grammaticalization that are neither down nor up have likewise been
recognized. The core concept of directionality has been weakened due to the
recognition of more diverse movements in language change. Additionally,
there has been a general loss of interest in (uni)directionality and its relation-
ship to grammaticalization. In my opinion, directionality continues to be a
topic of great interest, with some significant theoretical challenges remaining
unaddressed; for instance, why are some changes directional and others are
not? This, however, is an issue that is outside the scope of this article.
3. Four directionalities for grammaticalization
Spanish attests four types of directionality in grammaticalization, understood as

the diachronic paths by which new categories in the grammar of a language arise.
All directionalities are paths of grammaticalization changes. Grammaticalization
changes are defined, in a broad sense, as the creation of new categories or of new
exponents of an already existent category, involving, in all cases, one or more
reanalyses of existing language. Table 1 below presents, schematically, the four
directionalities.
Table 1. Directionalities of grammaticalization

A. Down in the cline
B. Up in the cline
C. Neither down nor up
D. Up and down in the cline = Round trip
I am aware that the table above poses some theoretical questions. One question is
whether directionality C, usually known as “neutral” or “neither down nor up,” is
an actual instance of directionality. I include it in the table and consider it as a type
of directionality, because change may establish diachronic paths with no need to
move from one level of grammar to another. The second question is why direc-
tionality D is not the sum of directionalities B + A – in other words, why it would
not be more desirable to decompose directionality D into two minor directionali-
ties? As I argue in Section 5, directionality D requires its own status, distinct from

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the sum of A and B, due to its specific source and due to the fact that its reinser-
tion into the grammar is in a specific category. It has its own path and distribution
as well; its circular path is characteristic and innovative.
Directionality D is a type of directionality practically unknown in the special-
ized literature, described only in Octavio de Toledo y Huerta (2002) and Com-
pany’s papers presented in 2016 and 2017 (cf. Acknowledgments). I call this fourth
type round trip directionality.
Before entering into the analysis of diachronic data, it is necessary to define
grammar and its basic domains, at least operatively, because the four types of
directionality involve diachronic movement across different grammatical
domains. Grammar is simply the combinatory ways in which words bind together
and the meanings that such combinations produce; rules, principles, and patterns
determine the possible word combinations in a language (Real Academia
Española & Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española 2009: 4).
A grammar is comprised of two different subsystems, which are separated
by a diffuse border. These subsystems are sentence grammar (SG) and periphery
grammar (PG). Sentence grammar is, essentially, the domain of core syntactic
relations, constituency, and (quasi-)obligatory distributions within a sentence,
whether simple or complex; it is a subsystem of obligations and dependencies,
allowing a lower level of order variability. The second subsystem is the domain of
extra-clausal constituency, no constituency, and weak or loose syntactic relations.
Within this subsystem, more variability in order is permitted, although in many
cases the linguistic forms in periphery grammar are placed at the extremes of an
utterance and separated by pauses from the rest of the utterance. This domain is
determined by the situation of discourse and by the speaker’s point of view. Both
grammatical subsystems are complementary and equally important for the con-
strual of utterances.
The distinction between SG and PG – or at least the distinction between
these two subsystems under a diverse set of labels – is a traditional one; papers
on grammaticalization usually describe this grammatical dichotomy, although
often without explicitly defining the two subsystems. Kaltenböck, Heine & Kuteva
(2011: 849–852) reviewed the differences between these two domains. The authors
differentiated between two systems: “sentence grammar,” also named “anchor”
and “core grammar”; and “thetical grammar.” These integrate into “discourse
grammar,” which “is composed of all the linguistic resources that are available
for constructing spoken, written (or signed) texts.” Essentially, they use the labels
“sentence,” “thetical,” and “discourse” to describe what I call “sentence,” “periph-
ery,” and “grammar,” respectively. Certainly, the discussion of whether a given lin-
guistic form is “in” the sentence grammar or not depends upon the researcher’s
conception of what grammar is.

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The four directionalities can be broadly characterized as an entrance into

the sentence grammar (directionality A), as an exit from the sentence grammar
into the periphery grammar (directionality B), as a renewal of sentence grammar
(directionality C), and as a circular path of exit from followed by entrance into the
sentence grammar (directionality D).
4. Four directionalities for grammaticalization
4.1 Down in the cline
Downgrading changes, as I said above, are diachronic paths that feature instances
of the following: lexical form > grammatical form; free forms > bound forms;
phrase/content word > functional word/morpheme; optional use > obligatory use;
peripheral grammar > sentence grammar; syntax > morphology; loose parataxis
> tight syntax.
The existential Spanish construction ha + ý > existential verb hay exemplifies
this first type of directionality paradigmatically.2 This directionality corresponds
to the traditional definition of grammaticalization.
The Old Spanish adverb ý < Lat. ībi ‘there’ became a bound form -y of the pre-
sent indicative existential verb hay ‘there is/there are’.3 In Old Spanish, the con-
servative-etymological existential verb was ha < Lat. habet. The form ha lacks any
affix, as (1) shows. (2) displays the typical context whereby the grammaticalization
of ha-y started. In this latter sentence, there is a remarkable locative redundancy
because, besides the locative adverb ý, there are other locative complements: en
la montaña do yo moro ‘on the mountain where I live’ encodes a scene in which
the direct object (do), un lago muy grande ‘a very big lake’, is located; this do also
has locative meaning. The locative adverb y functions as a full anaphor, which
retrieves the locative do previously mentioned. (3) shows both the etymological-
conservative ha and the innovative-grammaticalized ay coexisting in the same
sentence. This example demonstrates the typical contexts that favor each existen-
tial verb form at the beginning of the grammaticalization process. The conserva-
tive ha usually appears with a generic non-specific do, as with peçes e agua ‘fishes
2. Old Spanish examples are taken from the Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE) of Real
Academia Española (www.rae.es), and Corpus Diacrónico y Diatópico del Español de América
(CORDIAM) of Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (www.cordiam.org). Modern Spanish exam-
ples come from Corpus del Español Actual (CREA) of Real Academia Española (www.crea.es),
from Google Books and from spontaneous Mexican speech.
3. This change is examined at length in Company (2012).

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and water’ in (3), while the innovative form ay subcategorizes a concrete, definite
specific do, as in the case of un galápago mi amigo ‘a turtle who is my friend’.4 In
(4), the free, lexical, stressed adverb ý may appear in any position in the sentence;
this is seen post- and preverbally in (4a) and (4b), respectively. It can also appear
with tenses other than the present and can co-occur with verbs other than haber,
as in (4b) and (4c), showing that ý was a full, free adverb in Old Spanish.
(1) Ca en las cosas en que tan gran mal ha, que se non pueden
because in those things in which so big evil have.3sg that refl neg can.3pl
cobrar si se fazen.
avenge if refl make.3pl
‘Because in those things that are greatly evil, that they cannot be avenged if
they are embarked upon.’ (CORDE: 14th c., Don Juan Manuel, Conde Lucanor)
(2) En la montaña do yo moro ay un lago muy grande
on the mountain where I live.1sg have.3sg a lake very big
‘On the mountain where I live there is a big lake.’
(CORDE: 14th c., Anonymous, Caballero del Cisne)
(3) E yo se de un lugar apartado e muy viçioso do ha peçes
and I know.1sg of a place faraway and very nice where have.3sg fish
e agua, e ay un galapago mi amigo.
and water and have.3sg a turtle my friend
‘I know a nice, faraway place where there are fish and water, and there is a tur-
tle who is my friend.’ (CORDE: 13th c., Anonymous, Calila e Dimna)
(4) a. seyendo la tierra de suso sana e entera, que nunqua ouiera
be.ger the land by itself healthy and entire that never have.3sg
ý poblança alguna.
there settlement any
‘The land being healthy and entire by itself, never there was any settle-
ment.’ (CORDE: 13th c., Alfonso X, General estoria. Segunda parte)
4. In Spanish, as in many Romance languages, the noun phrase following the existential verb
ha, today hay, is a direct object, because the etymon is the transitive Latin verb habeo. The proof
of this noun phrase being do is that it always phrase pronominalizes in accusative form: hay un
lago ‘there is a lake’ > lo hay ‘there is it-acc.m’; hay una montaña ‘there is a mountain’ > la hay
‘there is it-acc.f’. From the 16th century on, a reanalysis of the existential verb as intransitive
one took place place; the consequence has been that the verb displays a plural inflectional mor-
pheme while the do is being reanalyzed as a subject, generating agreement with the verb: ha
habido problemas ‘there is problems’ > han habido problemas ‘there are problems’. The change is
already in progress (Hernández Díaz 2006).

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b. E quando la uio, marauillos ella e todos los que ý

and when her see.3sg delight.3sg she and everybody those that there
estauan
be.3pl
‘And when she did see her, she and everybody who was there was
delighted.’ (CORDE: 13th c., Alfonso X, General estoria. Segunda parte)
c. Qualicumque que… et en la uilla fuere,… ponga sus uozeros,…
anybody that and in the village be.3sg put.3sg their spokesmen
Et hi diga en qual casa…
and there tell.3sg in which house
‘Anybody who was in the village…and there, in that place, tells which
house… ’ (CORDE: 13th c., Anonymous, Fuero de Usagre)
As grammaticalization progressed in the 15th–16th centuries, the locative y

became an unstressed, obligatory form; it merged with the verb, becoming a
bound form that could only appear in present indicative. The etymological loca-
tive meaning of y ‘there’ became opaque to the point that another locative adverb,
allá ‘there’, with a very similar meaning to that of the etymological ý, appears in
the sentence (5a). This means that the locative meaning of y was completely weak-
ened or eroded by this point. The locative complement that could be found along
with the existential hay became more abstract, as in the case of entre los naturales
‘among the natives’ (5b), although concrete locative complements could also co-
occur with existential verbs at any stage of Spanish. The examples in (6) show the
final stages of the grammaticalization process: the present indicative of the exis-
tential verb haber now has a fixed form, hay, and the sentence can occur without
a locative complement.
(5) a. porque alla ay mucha abundancia y aca falta
because there have.3sg great abundance and here dearth
‘Because there, there is great abundance and here, dearth.’
(CORDIAM: 16th c., Mexican document)
b. El mesmo desasosiego ay entre los naturales
the same unrest have.3sg among the natives
‘There is the same unrest among the natives.’
(6) a. Hay tiempo para todo.
have.3sg time for everything
‘There is time for everything.’ (Spontaneous speech)
b. Hay problemas para rato.
have.3sg problems for while
‘There have been problems for a long time.’ (Spontaneous speech)

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In summary, the change consisted of hay replacing ha and of y being eliminated as

an adverb of the Spanish language.5 The directionality of this process is therefore
a downgrading in the cline: a free adverb has become a morphological form inte-
grated into a single verbal base. Two reanalyses took place: first, the adverb was
reinterpreted as a bound form, and then the full verb was reinterpreted as a bound
form – i.e., a root. At the same time, the stress was completely removed from ý;
currently, -y is an unstressed morpheme with no lexical meaning at all.
The downgrading diachronic path goes from free syntax > morphology. This
specific example follows this path: (i) Two free words occur in any relative order:
in this case, the full verb haber ‘there is, to have’ + full lexical adverb ý ‘in that
place’. (ii) The order becomes fixed: verb + adverb, ha + ý, occur in a construction
with a loss of etymological distribution and meaning. (iii) Coalescence and uni-
verbation yield two bound morphemes.
4.2 Up in the cline
Upgrading changes, as I said above, are diachronic paths that feature instances of
the following: sentence grammar > periphery grammar; forms having syntactic
grammatical status > forms having less grammatical status; bound forms > free
forms; grammatical words > lexical words; univerbation > deverbation; morphol-
ogy > syntax; syntax > discourse; narrow scope > wide scope.
The change from full movement verb andar > subjective/intersubjective dis-
course marker of exhortation and confirmation ándale exemplifies this second
type of directionality paradigmatically.6 Examples (7)–(11) show the diachronic
continuum through which the movement verb andar gradually evolved into a
discourse marker. The process is a change by (inter)subjectification. The change
exemplifies an exit from the sentence grammar and an entrance into the periphery
grammar.
In (7a)–(7b) andar ‘to walk’ is a full movement verb; it takes animate human
subjects with an agentive role, such as Blasillo in (7a) and the native mining men
in (7b); these subjects displace to a locative goal that is an argument of the verb,
such as a la escuela ‘to school’ in (7a) and a ellas ‘to them [mines]’ in (7b).
5. Company & Espinosa (2014) analyze the relationship of this change to the general structura-
tion of demonstrative adverbs in Old Spanish.
6. This change and the next one are analyzed extensively, for other theoretical purposes, in
Company (2006, 2008).

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(7) a. De que Blasillo ande al escuela me e holgado mucho

since that Blasillo go.3sg to-the school pron rejoice.1sg a lot
‘Since Blasillo has been going to school, I have been very happy.’
b. No se les hizo mas preguntas en lo tocante a estas minas,
neg refl dat make.3sg more questions in regard to these mines
porque declararon que desde el tienpo del ynga no andan a
because declare.3pl that since the time of-the Ynca neg walk.3pl to
ellas
them
‘There were no more questions about these mines, because they declared
that since the Ynca emperor times, they do not walk to them.’
(CORDIAM: 16th c., Peruvian document)
The example in (8) shows that the directive locative goal has been weakened and
replaced by a stative location, aquí ‘here’, lessening the meaning of movement or
displacement towards a goal entailed by the verb. The subject also weakens indi-
viduation, because uno ‘one’ is an indefinite or impersonal pronoun. Example (8)
is the bridge context between the referential meaning of andar ‘to go’ and the dis-
course subjective meaning seen in (11) below. A bridge context, following Heine
(2002), means that a form or a construction may have two readings simultane-
ously, the conservative one and the innovative one; (8) is ambiguous between a
referential interpretation and a non-referential one.
(8) ¿qué cree, que uno anda aquí por su puro gusto?
what think.3sg that one go.3sg here for their just sake
‘What, do you think one is here for one’s health?’
(CORDE: 20th c., Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo)
Examples (9) and (10) below represent a further step in the weakening of the ref-
erential movement meaning of andar ‘to walk, to go’. The presence of a reflexive
clitic, se, in se anda makes the subject itself the goal of movement; thus, there is
not a locative argument. In other words, the locative argument is cancelled, and
because of that, the verb loses its movement meaning. In (10), the clitic contin-
ues being present, as in te anda and le anda, but there is no syntactic subject: the
locative goal has been replaced by an abstract goal, a human being. This is seen in
the pronoun a ti ‘to you’, understood from the context in (10a), or al niño ‘(to) the
child’ in (10b). The clitics, te and le, in (10) are still pronouns, which anchors their
reference to nominals.

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(9) Esta señora no se anda con bromas

this woman neg pron go.3sg with jokes
‘This woman does not go around joking.’
(CORDE: 19th c., Benito Pérez Galdós, Trafalgar)
(10) a. ¿no te anda de hambre?
neg refl walk.3sg of hunger?
‘Aren’t you ravenous?’
(CREA: 20th c., Felipe Victoria Zepeda, La casta divina)
b. Ya le anda del baño al niño
Now it walk.3sg of-the bathroom to-the child
‘The child really needs to go to the bathroom.’ (Spontaneous speech)
Finally, the form ándale in (11) is the switch context (Heine 2002) that shows an
upgrading in the cline with an entrance into the periphery grammar: (11) only has
one interpretation, as a discourse marker. In (11) the verb shows syntactic rigidi-
fication, meaning it can only appear in third person singular anda, and the dative
clitic is an obligatory le; andar ‘to go’ is no longer a verb, but rather a discourse
marker having both an intersubjective (11a) and a subjective (11b) meaning. The
construction verb + dative clitic form a fixed expression, creating an autonomous
predication. This expression must appear alone, usually at the beginning or at the
end of the utterance, increasing in scope. Both the verb and the clitic lose their
relational capacity. The meaning of the verb no longer has to do with movement,
and thus it may co-occur with another verb of movement, vete ‘go’, as in (11a); this
co-occurrence means that the original etymological referential meaning of andar
‘to walk’ has been completely weakened. The upgrading in the cline is completed:
the construction leaves the sentence grammar domain and begins to function in
the periphery grammar.
(11) a. Y al ver a Buenaventura bien sport, le dio un tirón a su
and by see.inf to Buenaventura so sporty, dat give.3sg a tug to his
corbata y ordenó a uno de sus ayudantes: “¡ándale, vete
tie and ask.3sg to one of his assistants: walk.imper-to.it go.imper
por otra camisa y una chamarra!
for another shirt and a jacket”
‘And when he saw Buenaventura [looking] so sporty, he pulled on his tie
and yelled to one of his assistants, “Come on! Go get me another shirt
and a [leather] jacket!”’ (CREA: 21st c., Mexican newspaper)

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b. –¿Y eso es todo el problema? – Ándale, exactamente eso

and that be.3sg all the problem? go.imper-to.it exactly that
¿y te parece poco?
and you.dat seem.3sg small?
‘And that’s the whole problem? Yes, yes, that’s exactly it. Does it seem
small to you?’ (Spontaneous speech)
In summation, in upgrading directionality, the direction is sentence grammar

> periphery grammar. This example follows these steps: (i) The verb andar ‘to
walk’ is a full movement verb. > (ii) The weakening of the displacement meaning
becomes a kind of predicative verb. > (iii) It becomes an (inter)subjective dis-
course marker of exhortation and confirmation ándale ‘go on/that’s right’ with an
obligatory dative clitic affixed to the verb.
4.3 Neither down nor up
The phrase “neither down nor up” describes changes that produce neither
stronger nor weaker grammatical ties and do not involve any movement between
language levels. This type of grammaticalization comes about without exiting the
sentence grammar. Usually, these processes maintain the same introductory form
or construction but change the distribution radically and the meaning along with
it.
These changes are neutral as to directionality. They can involve changes such
as the following: the spread of prepositions to new contexts and distributions
without changing their grammatical status as prepositions; the spread of some
conjunctions into new distributions without changing their grammatical status as
conjunctions; displacement from temporal to concessive, conditional, or causal
meanings; displacement from locative to temporal meanings; etc.
The change from temporal mientras ‘while’ > conditional mientras ‘if ’ is a par-
adigmatic example of this third type of directionality – or, more properly, non-
directionality. Examples (12)–(14) show the diachronic continuum of the entire
change. The process is a change by subjectification.
Latin temporal correlative conjunction-adverb dum ‘while’ + interim ‘in the
meantime’ is the etymon of Spanish mientras (12a). By a process of attraction in
Latin, interim began to be used next to dum. One of these clauses lost its intro-
ductory conjunction, meaning it was interpreted as the main clause. The clause
introduced by dum interim was subsequently interpreted as a subordinate tempo-
ral clause (12b). Latin particles underwent univerbation, giving rise to the Spanish
temporal conjunction mientras ‘while’ in (12c). The subordinate clause introduced
by mientras in (12c) is co-existential or simultaneous with the temporal line of the

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predication denoted in the main clause. The indicative mood is proof that mien-
tras is factual in nature; it expresses something that is true in the world in which
the reference of the events is framed. In the temporal factual use of simultane-
ity, the subjects of both clauses are usually human – for example, los otros griegos
‘the other Greeks’ and estos quatro ‘these four [kings]’ in (12c) – and they are fre-
quently expressed in the third person.
(12) a. dum quoquetur… interim potabimus
while cook.3sg.pas meanwhile drink.1pl
‘While [the food] is being cooked, in the meantime we will drink.’
(Plautus, apud Lodge 1971: s.v. interim)
b. dum interim quoquetur, potabimus
while in the meantime cook.3sg.pas drink.1pl
‘While the food is being cooked, we will drink.’
(Late Latin, apud Corominas 1980–1991: s.v. mientras)
c. E entre tanto legaron ý el rrey Dohas e Ajax Thalamon
and meanwhile arrive.3pl there the King Dohad and Ajax Thalamon
e Agamenon e Menelao, e mientras los otros griegos lidiauan
and Agamenon and Menelao, and while the other Greeks fight.3pl
con los troyanos, tomaron estos quatro el puerto
with the Trojans, take.3pl these four the port
‘And in the meantime King Dohas and Ajax Thalamon and Agamemnon
and Menelaus arrived there, and while the other Greeks fought the Tro-
jans, these four assaulted the port.’
(CORDE: 13th c., Anonymous, Historia troyana)
Mientras in (13) introduces sentences which have the verb in the subjunctive
mood. The predication refers to a circumstance occurring later than the moment
of reference. The use of the subjunctive mood weakens or cancels the referential
reading of simultaneity, giving a non-factive reading, because the subject has not
carried out the action of the verb. The subjunctive mood also weakens the tem-
poral meaning of mientras. Examples in (13) are the critical or the bridging con-
text between the temporal etymological meaning of simultaneity in (12c) and the
innovative conditional meaning in (14) below.
(13) a. Un dia pensaron el gallo y el gato comerse la comida mientras
one day think.3pl the rooster and the cat to-eat the food while
estuviera en misa la beata
be.3sg at Mass the pious-woman
‘One day the rooster and the cat thought about eating the food while the
pious old woman was at Mass.’
(CORDE: 20th c., Anonymous, Cuentos extremeños)

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b. Los jueces y magistrados, mientras se hallen disfrutando de la

the judges and magistrates while pron find.3pl enjoy.ger of the
licencia por falta de salud, percibirán íntegro su sueldo
licence for lack of health recieve.3pl entire their salary
‘The judges and magistrates, while they are on sick leave, will be paid
their full salary’ (CORDE: 20th c., Ley provisional)
Mientras has an innovative conditional meaning in (14). The conjunction intro-

duces a condition under which the predication of the main clause may be fulfilled.
The adverb no ‘not’ after the conjunction and the verb being in the subjunctive
mood are proof of the conditional reading. The change is a typical case of subjecti-
fication, moving either from an external referential temporal meaning to an inter-
nal non-referential non-temporal meaning or from a non-subjective meaning to a
subjective meaning.
(14) a. Tomad, señora, este pedazo de pan y esta jarra de agua, cuyo
take.imp madame this piece of bread and this pitcher of water whose
alimento tendréis y no otro, mientras no obedezcáis a vuestro
food take.2sg and neg other while neg obey.2sg to your
padre
father
‘Take, woman, this piece of bread and this pitcher of water and no other,
as long as you choose not to obey your father.’
(CORDE: 18th c., Ignacio García Malo, Voz de la naturaleza)
b. Su Real majestad, a la puerta hay un gallo, que dice que
your royal majesty at the door have.3sg a rooster, who say.3sg that
no se va mientras no le paguen medio real que le deben
neg pron go.3sg while neg dat pay.3pl half real that dat owe.3pl
‘Your Royal Majesty, there is a rooster at the door who says he will not
go away until he has been paid the half a real that he is owed.’
(CORDE: 20th c., Anonymous, Cuentos extremeños)
In summation, the directionality of the change is as follows: sentence grammar

becomes sentence grammar. Mientras retains the same category, a conjunction of
subordination, but with the distribution and meaning changed. The diachronic
path as a whole is as follows: (i) It has a correlative temporal meaning between two
adverbs. > (ii) It has a factual meaning of co-existence. (iii) There is a weakening
of coexistence: it gains a future meaning. > (iv) It becomes an implication between
the two situations. > (v) It gains a conditional meaning.

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4.4 Up and down, round trip: A new directionality in grammaticalization
There are some changes in which grammaticalization exhibits a directionality that

is very similar to a round trip. First, there is an up in the cline, and then there is
subsequently a down in the cline. The form or construction first leaves the sen-
tence grammar and enters into the periphery grammar, displaying a discourse
subjective meaning and a discourse category status; then, later, the form comes
back into the sentence grammar, but always does so in a different category from
that of the etymological source. For that reason, I will formalize the return to
grammar and the form’s new category status as SG’. The resulting diachronic cline
as a whole appears schematically in Table 2. I call this process “round trip direc-
tionality,” and it constitutes a fourth type of directionality in grammaticalization.
Table 2. Round trip directionality

SG > PG > SG’
Empirical evidence for round trip directionality is presented in (15).7 The example
in (15a) comes from Octavio de Toledo y Huerta (2002). Examples (15b) and (15c)
will be analyzed in the following sections in depth. The three examples provide
evidence for the hypothesis that round trip directionality forms a structural pat-
tern in language change.8
(15) a. (i) Full movement verb vaya: vaya a la escuela ‘go to school’ > (ii) Sub-
jective discourse marker of surprise / disgust ¡vaya!: ¡Vaya!, no me sabía
yo esas mañas ‘well [lit. go]! ‘I wasn’t aware of those bad customs’ > (iii)
Adjective vaya: vaya nochecita que pasé ‘what a night I had (without
sleeping)’
b. (i) Full ditransitive verb decir ‘to tell / to say’ + full subordinate comple-
tive sentence > (ii) Coalescence of verb + conjunction que > (iii) Eviden-
tial discourse marker of doubt dizque > (iv) Adjective dizque.
7. In Spanish there are no cases of the reverse round trip directionality PG > SG > PG. I do not
know why at this moment, but I advance a possible reason: the forms in PG are derived or sec-
ondary categories, in that PG is always coded with forms of SG, at least in Spanish, with the only
exception being primary interjections: oh, ay, uy. For that reason, it seems somewhat unlikely
that a form would move into PG, then after that become a SG form, and then after that to leave
its anchor status again to reach a new PG status.
8. There is no documentary evidence for interpretations other than that of a round direction-
ality. For instance, it might be possible to think about a retention or a latent niche of meaning
for an adjective, one that developed prior to or in parallel with the conventionalization of a dis-
course marker, but that possibility has never been attested.

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c. (i) Noun phrase + relative sentence que + copulative sentence >

(ii) Coalescence of relative pronoun + copulative verb + particle que >
(iii) Discourse marker of evidentiality quesque > (iv) Adjective quesque.
Some aspects of this directionality must be commented upon. First, the result of
the round trip diachronic path is always an adjective. The reason for this seems
to be that the original source is a full verb; because of this, the new forms, both
in PG and in SG’, retain predicative force, like they are retaining a “memory” of
their original category. Adjectives in Spanish are nominal forms capable of having
predicative meaning. Second, the new adjective in SG’ has a fixed order: it comes
before the noun, which is not marked for quantifier or evidential order in Spanish,
but which is marked for general adjective order. This restriction in order, in my
opinion, results from the fact that the new forms are a derived category, undergo-
ing many changes in meaning and distribution during the long trajectory, before
reaching the category status of adjective.
4.4.1 Full (di)transitive verb decir ‘to tell’ / ‘to say’ > evidential discourse
marker of doubt dizque ‘supposedly’ > adjective dizque ‘supposed’
The particle dizque comes from the information verb decir ‘he/she/it tells, he/she/
it says’, plus the conjunction que ‘that’ which introduces a completive clause that
functions as the do of the main verb decir ‘to tell, to say’. This type of composite
clause is rooted in Latin and is documented in all stages of Spanish, as the exam-
ples in (16) show.
(16) a. Et por ende, amenazandol, dize que por la ssu mallat
and consequently threaten.ger-acus ay.3sg that for the his wickedness
es por derecho juyzio condenpnado
be.3sg by fair law condemned
‘And by that, threatening him, [he] says that because of his wickedness
he is condemned by fair law.’ (CORDE: 13th c., Alfonso X, Setenario)
b. y con juramento que de él se ha tomado dice que vio
and with oath that of him refl take.3sg say.3sg that see.3sg a
tanto, que cree que [la nave] iba lastrada dello
lot that believe.3sg that [the ship] be.3sg ballasted for-that
‘And by oath, he says that the ship was so filled with merchandise that it
was ballasted by that reason.’ (CORDE: 16th c., letter)
c. ¿Ostí dice que pescador es maleante; Ostí, chofer?
Ostí say.3sg that fisherman be.3sg bad-man Ostí driver
‘Does Osti say that the fisherman is a bad man?’
(CORDE: 20th c., José María Arguedas, El zorro de
arriba y el zorro de abajo)

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Even from far back, as seen in (17), an abbreviated or eroded form is attested, diz
‘he/she/it tells, he/she/it says’. This form is followed by the conjunction que, either
with graphic separation as in (17a) or with coalescence of the two forms as in (17b),
with both constructions preserving the value of two clauses. Formally, examples
in (17) represent the source stage of the subjectification process by which this evi-
dential marker was recruited in Spanish.
(17) a. Et otrosí o diz que departiesen la luz de las tiniebras sse
and else or say.3sg that separate.3pl the light from the shadows pron
entiende que departieron
understand.3sg that separate.3pl
‘And else, where [God] says that the light is separated from the darkness,
it is understood that it occurred.’ (CORDE: 13th c., Alfonso X, Setenario)
b. En el cclxxxviiiº capitulo, que fue a los xxxv annos, dizque
in the 287 chapter that be.3sg at the 35 years say.3.sg-that
aviendo el rey don Ramiro contienda con el rey don Bermudo,…,
have.ger the king don Ramiro conflict with the king don Bermudo
adolecio en Leon e morio
fall.3sg-ill in Leon and die.3sg
‘In the 287 chapter, at the 35 years of his reign, [the book] says that when
King Ramiro fought King Bermudo … the first one fell ill in the city of
Leon and died.’ (CORDE: 14th c., Don Juan Manuel, Crónica abreviada)
In Examples (16) and (17) above, the verb dice/diz functions as a full verb, display-
ing a subject – either an animate subject, as in the case of ‘he’ in (16a) and (16b),
‘God’ in (17a), and Osti (a proper noun) in (16c); or an inanimate subject, as in the
case of ‘the book’ in (17b) – and a do clause. The verb preserves its etymological
referential meaning of information transfer in these examples.
Semantically, examples such as (18) must have been on the path to or an inter-
mediate stage in the progress toward the subjectification of dice + que as an evi-
dential marker. The verb is encoded in the impersonal form se dice ‘one tells, one
says’, which indicates that it is both possible that everyone might say it and that no
one is responsible for saying it.
(18) a. En Seçilia se dice que hay una sal que, echándola en
In Sicilia pron say.3sg that have.3sg a salt that throw.ger-acus in
el fuego, se desface é torna en agua.
the fire pron fade.3sg and turn.3sg into water
‘In Sicilian it is said that there is a kind of salt that becomes water,
putting it into fire.’
(CORDE: 15th c., Pero Díaz de Toledo, Diálogo e razonamiento
en la muerte del marqués de Santillana)

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b. Se dice que la prosperidad material trae la cultura y la

pron say.3sg that the wellbeing material bring.3sg the culture and the
dignificación del pueblo.
dignity of-the people.
‘It is said that material wellbeing brings with it culture and dignity of the
people.’ (CORDE: 19th c., Ángel Ganivet, Carta a Unamuno)
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, the meaning of the sequence diz que/dizque
vacillated amongst being a predication with two clauses, being an evidential
expression of uncertainty, and having both readings simultaneously; this can be
seen in (19). Such ambiguous expressions were very common in Spanish, and they
constitute the bridge context between the grammatical clause and the discourse
evidential marker; that is, the examples have two possible readings simultane-
ously, as a referential full verb and as an evidential non-verb form.
(19) a. Levantaronse çiertos indios en la provjnçia de Guaxaca,
stand up.3sg-pron some Indians in the providence of Oaxaca
diz que con acuerdo del dicho Pedro de Alvarado.
say.3sg that with accordance of-the mentioned Pedro of Alvarado
‘Some Indians stood up in the province of Oaxaca, (they) say-that (this
was) probably in accordance with the mentioned Peter of Alvarado.’
(CORDIAM: 16th c., Mexican letter)
b. que la tal Francisca Chicuagem le havía dado un azeite a
that the such Francisca Chicuaguem dat have.3sg given an oil to
Antonia. Dizque lo havía untado al otro su marido.
Antonia. say.3sg-that acus have.3sg put to-the other her husband
‘Francisca had given an oil to Antonia. (they) say-that (this was) appar-
ently to put on her husband.’
(CORDIAM: 17th c., Mexican legal document)
The particle que ‘that’ in (19) above introduces a clause that could function as do,
at least semantically; however, from a syntactic point of view, this clause is not
properly an object. It does not admit substitution by the neuter accusative clitic
lo ‘it’, a substitution that constitutes a classic test to identify a do in Spanish. In
addition, there is no identifiable subject of the verb diz in (19). This lack of sub-
ject paved the way for the acquisition of a discourse value of evidentiality. Via the
utterance introduced by diz que ‘say-that-supposedly’ in (19), the speaker-writer
communicates uncertainty about the event stated in the preceding sentence; they
are communicating that “everybody supposedly says that, but to me (the concep-
tualizer) there is no evidence.”
Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, it is common to see dizque ‘suppos-
edly’ co-occuring with decir ‘to say’, as in (20). Those contexts are the proof that

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the change from full ditransitive verb decir ‘to tell / to say’ + que ‘that’ to evidential
discourse marker is completed. These examples serve as proof that dizque ‘suppos-
edly’ has no more informational meaning; because of that, it can appear adjacent
to the full verb dice ‘says’, which is the etymon of the new evidential marker. Diz is
no longer a verb, and que is no longer a conjunction.
(20) a. y me levantó testimonio que dizque dixe yo quándo dizen
and acus raise.3sg accusation that supposedly say.1sg I when say.3pl
los artículos en la yglesia, que así como dizen el primero
the articles at the church that like-that like say.3pl the first-one
creer en un solo dios todopoderoso, que disque dezía yo
believe.inf in a one god almighty that supposedly say.1sg I
en lugar desto,… echo a dios en el fuego.
instead of-this put.1sg a god into the fire.
‘And he raised me a false accusation (he falsely accused me) that suppos-
edly I said that… instead that supposedly I said I put god into the fire.’
(CORDIAM: 16th c., Mexican legal document)
b. Esperen, aguarden, / que yo lo diré. / Porque, como dizque /
wait.imp hold on.imp that I acus tell.1sg because like supposedly
dice no sé quién, / ellas sólo saben / hilar y coser.
say.3sg neg know.3sg who they only know.3pl spin.inf and sew.inf
‘Wait, wait, I’ll tell it. Because, supposedly somebody says that…’
(CORDIAM: 17th c., Mexico, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Villancicos)
Examples (21a)–(21c) show the last stage of the upgrading process; the form diz
‘say’ and the conjunction que ‘that’ undergo univerbation, forming dizque, and
the construction then becomes an unanalyzable form. The two formatives create
a new word, an evidential particle indicating the speaker’s uncertainty and doubt
with regards to the preceding discourse with a meaning close to ‘supposedly’.
Dizque often stands alone at the beginning or at the end of an utterance, isolated
from it by a pause (comma) and followed by a sustained suspensive intonation,
as seen in (21c). It is worth noting that the form dizque constitutes a lexical entry
in present-day Spanish dictionaries (see, for instance, Real Academia Española
& Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española’s dictionary, 2013: s.v. dizque).
The directionality at this stage is an up in the cline, from sentence grammar to
periphery grammar.

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(21) a. Se trajo todo al instante, y con estos y otros auxilios,

pron bring.3sg everything at once and with these and other remedies
diz que se alivió el enfermo.
supposedly pron get better.3sg the sick.
‘Everything was brought at once, and with these and other remedies, sup-
posedly the sick one got better.’
(CORDE: 19th c., Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Periquillo sarniento)
b. ─¿Cómo vivirán esa gente? ─Dizque son artistas.
How live.3pl those people? supposedly be.3pl artists.
‘─How is that these people live? ─Supposedly they are artists.’
(CORDE: 20th c., Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Un mundo para Julius)
c. Que Francisco se sacó la lotería, dizque…
that Francisco win.3sg the lottery, supposedly…
‘That Francisco won the lottery, supposedly…’ (Spontaneous speech)
Once the evidential discourse marker dizque ‘supposedly’ had come into being,
the form, which maintained the previous subjective meaning, came back to the
sentence grammar as an adjective, as examples in (22) show. The form dizque ‘sup-
posed’ began to operate as a full adjective: it can be found modifying nouns, the
nucleus of a full noun phrase, such as ley ‘law’ in (22a), imagen ‘look’ in (22b), and
comisionados ‘committee members’ in (22c); also, it appears in a distribution com-
mon for some adjectives in Spanish, following determiners such as la ‘the’ in (22a),
una ‘an’ in (22b), and sus ‘their’ in (22c). However, as a remnant of its previous life
as a verb and discourse marker, the new adjective has restrictions, occurring only
to the left of the nominal nucleus. The meaning of this new adjective is evalua-
tive, placing doubt on the referential features of the modified noun: e.g., dizque ley
implies “it is not a true law,” dizque imagen juvenil implies “it is not a true young
look,” and dizque comisionados implies “they are not true union commissioners.”
As many adjectives in Spanish, dizque may also modify other adjectives, as in the
case of dizque altruistas ‘supposedly altruistic’ in (23).
(22) a. los transeúntes viles, amparados por la dizque ley, solían correr
the passer-by vile protected by the supposed law use.3pl run.inf
tras el ladrón.
behind the thief.
‘Vile people, protected by the supposed-bad law, used to run…’
(CREA: 20th c., Fernando Vallejo, La virgen de los sicarios)

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b. trepados en un escenario y ejecutando piruetas al son de

hung on a stage and play.ger pirouettes to-the time of
conocidos huayñitos o tinkus, todo para darle una dizque
known huayñitos or tinkus all to give.inf-dat a supposed
imagen juvenil al folklore actual.
look young to-the folklore actual.
‘On a stage doing pirouettes as the time-traditional music sounds, all to
give a supposed new young look to the traditional folklore.’
(CREA: 21st c., Bolivian newspaper)
c. que permite que sus líderes retiren del ejercicio docente
that allow.3sg that their leaders remove.3pl from-the exercise teaching
a buenos maestros, para convertirlos en sus dizque
good teachers to transform.inf-acus in their supposedly
comisionados sindicales
commissioners union
‘It allows union leaders to remove good teachers from teaching to trans-
form them into their supposed union commissioners.’
(CREA: 21st c., Mexican newspaper)
(23) Es notoria la desorganización que. se tiene en México.
be.3sg notable the lack-of-organization that pron have.3sg in Mexico.
Muchas seudoorganizaciones dizque altruistas, algunas de ellas en
many pseudo-organizations supposedly altruistic some of them in
condiciones extrañas…
conditions strange…
‘It is notable, the lack of organization in Mexico. Many supposedly altruistic
pseudo-organizations, many of them in strange conditions…’
(CREA: 20th c., Mexican newspaper)
The directionality at the stage represented by (22) and (23) is a down in the cline,
from periphery grammar to sentence grammar; however, it takes the form of a
new grammatical category, adjective. This is different from the category of its ety-
mon, which was a verb + conjunction.
In summary, the directionality of the change as a whole is a round trip. First, it
exits from the sentence grammar, and then second, it is reinserted into it. In both
processes, it is involved in creation of new categories via reanalysis. The process is,
therefore, as follows: (i) Full (di)transitive verb decir ‘to tell / to say’ > (ii) Eviden-
tial discourse marker of doubt dizque ‘supposedly’ > (iii) Adjective dizque ‘sup-
posed’ ‘not true’.

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4.4.2 Noun Phrase + relative sentence que + copulative sentence > Discourse
marker of evidentiality quesque > Adjective quesque
This change follows the same diachronic path as the previous one. Quesque dis-
plays a round trip diachronic path similar to that of dizque ‘supposedly, not
true’ and that of vaya ‘go’ in Example (15a) above. Examples (24)–(26) show the
diachronic continuum by which two sentences gradually evolve into a discourse
marker of evidentiality,9 with this discourse marker later reinserted into the sen-
tence grammar as an adjective.10
Example (24) shows the source construction of the new discourse particle
quesque ‘apparently’ and the new adjective quesque ‘not true, not totally’. The new
form comes from que + es + que, which are in fact two clauses; the first is a rela-
tive clause introduced by the relative pronoun-conjunction que ‘that, which’, hav-
ing a nominal antecedent fiestas ‘celebrations’. The first predications are fiestas del
Yahuayra, que … ‘celebrations of Yahuayra that … ’ in (24a) and mi primera peti-
ción que … ‘my first request that … ’ in (24b). The second clause is a copulative
clause; this can be seen inserted into the relative clause, as seen in es que en ella
pedían … ‘is that in it they prayed for … ’ in (24a) and es que declare los otros
vezinos que … ‘is that he tells the other neighbors that … ’ (24b). The utterance
introduced by the second que ‘that’, which follows the verb es ‘to be’, functions as
the subject of the copulative verb. In (24a), que en ella pedían … ‘that in it they
prayed for … ’ is the subject of es ‘is’ (24a); equally, in (24b) que declare los otros
vezinos … ‘that he tells the other neighbors that … ’ is the subject of es ‘is’. The two
predications, relative + copulative, inform or explain the reader what kind of fies-
tas ‘celebrations’ are, what kind of petición ‘request’ is.
(24) a. Y en este mes haçían las fiestas del Yahuayra, que
and in this month make.3pl the celebrations of-the Yahuayra which
es que en ella pedían al Haçedor que… produxiesen bien en
be.3sg that on it ask.3pl to-the Maker that… produce.3pl well on
aquel año y que fuese próspero.
that year and that be.3sg prosperous
‘In that month they made celebrations of Yahuayra, which is that they
asked for good harvest times.’ (CORDIAM: 17th c., Peruvian chronicle)
9. The diachronic attestation of quesque is harder to track than dizque in old texts, because
quesque is considered more colloquial than dizque; because of that, the documentation in old
Spanish texts is very scant.
10. For Aikhenvald (2004: Chapter 1), dizque is the only true evidential marker in Spanish; she
does not attest quesque. However, there is no doubt that quesque is another evidential marker,
one that is amply documented in many American Spanish dialects. This article shows in passing
empirical support for evidentiality.

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b. se sirua de mandar al dicho capitan Jacinto Sanchez dé

pron help.3sg of ask.inf to-the said capitan Jazinto Sanches give.3sg
cumplimiento a lo que lleuo pedido en mi primera petision, que
answer to that that carry.3sg asked in my first request that
es que declare los otros vezinos que dise que yo les
be.3sg that declare.3sg the other neighbors that say.3sg that I dat
he hecho daño en sus sementeras.
have.1sg done damage in their countrysides
‘You must order the said Captain Jacinto to keep my first request, that he
tell the other neighbors that I have not done damage in their country-
sides.’ (CORDIAM: 18th c., Mexican legal document)
Example (25) displays the new evidential marker quesque. The three forms que-es-
que undergo univerbation into quesque ‘apparently, supposedly’. The whole con-
struction constitutes an unanalyzable form: quesque is no longer the sum of two
sentences, there is not a copulative verb, and there is no longer a relative pro-
noun conjunction or a second conjunction. Rather, the three formatives create a
new word, an evidential particle indicating the speaker’s uncertainty and doubt
with regards to the preceding discourse, with a meaning close to “supposedly” or
“apparently” – essentially, “others could say that, but I doubt it.” At this stage, the
directionality is an up in the cline.
(25) El primer día que fuimos, quesque a posar, como dicen, fue, ora
the first day that go.1pl supposedly to pose.inf as say.3pl be.3sg now
verá usté, el lunes.
see.2sg you the Monday
‘The first day we went, supposedly to pose, as they say, it was on Monday.’
(CREA: 20th c., Eladia González, Quién como Dios)
Finally, once the evidential discourse marker quesque ‘apparently’ had come into
being, the form, which maintained the previous subjective meaning, came back to
the sentence grammar as an adjective; this is shown in (26). The form quesque ‘not
true, not actual’ works as a full adjective: it appears modifying nouns that serve
as the nuclei of full noun phrases, such as especialista ‘specialist’ in (26a), hombre
‘man’ in (26b), and siesta ‘nap’ in (26c); also, it appears in a distribution typical of
certain adjectives in Spanish, occurring after a determiner such as el ‘the’ in (26b),
un ‘an’ in (26a), and una ‘an’ in (26c). As a remnant of its previous verbal and dis-
course life, the new adjective is restricted in its placement: it can only occur to the
left of the nominal nucleus. The meaning of this new adjective is evaluative, plac-
ing doubt on the referential features of the modified noun, such as quesque espe-
cialista which carries the meaning of “not a true specialist,” quesque muy hombre
which means “not a true man,” and quesque siesta, “not an actual nap.” As with

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many adjectives in Spanish, quesque is able to modify other adjectives, demon-

strated by quesque rojo ‘not true red’, in (27). The form quesque also constitutes a
lexical entry in present-day Spanish dictionaries (Real Academia Española & Aso-
ciación de Academias de la Lengua Española, 2013: s.v. quesque).
(26) a. pero hay que ser constante, debe aplicársela
but have.3sg to be.inf constant must.2sg put.inf-pron-acus
cinco veces al día. –Se lo dijo un quesque especialista.
five times at-the day. pron acus say.3sg a supposed specialist
‘It is necessary to be constant, to apply it five times each day. This was
said by a supposed/false specialist.’
(21st c., Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo, Los talleres de la vida, Mexico,
Google Books)
b. El quesque muy hombre de mi padre temblaba de muina.
the supposed big manliness of my father shake.3sg of rage.
‘The supposed manliness of my father was shaking with rage.’
(21st c., Gabriel Velasco, Los dioses son caprichosos, Google Books)
c. Estoy tomando una quesque siesta, con eso se me pasa la
be.3sg take.ger a supposed nap with that pron dat go.3sg the
migraña.
migraine.
‘I am taking a supposed/false nap, with that the migraine will go.’
(Spontaneous speech)
(27) Se siente muy elegante con ese vestido quesque rojo, pero le sienta
pron feel.3sg very fancy with that dress supposedly red but dat suit.3sg
pésimo
awful.
‘(S)he feels very cool with that false red dress, but (s)he looks awful.’
(Spontaneous speech)
The directionality at this stage is a down in the cline, from periphery grammar to
sentence grammar; however, in this stage, it takes the form of a new grammatical
category – adjective – that is very different from its two source clauses.
In summary, the directionality of this change is a round trip. First, the form
exits from the sentence grammar and enters into the periphery grammar; then,
second, it is reinserted into the sentence grammar. Both processes result in the
creation of new categories via reanalysis. The process is as follows: (i) Noun
Phrase + relative sentence are introduced by the pronoun que + copulative sen-
tence + conjunction que > (ii) Form becomes a discourse marker of evidentiality
quesque ‘apparently’ > (iii) Form becomes adjective quesque ‘not true, not actual’.

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4.5 Round trip directionality and paradigmatization
The proof that all forms and constructions found in (15) complete a round trip –
up and then down in the cline, SG > PG > SG’ – is that all of them exhibit para-
digmatization, which is suggestive of grammaticalization (Lehmann 1995 [1982]).
Paradigmatization is understood as the possibility of alternative choices with sim-
ilar meaning and distribution. The new adjectives coming from the periphery
grammar – vaya, dizque, and quesque – exhibit distribution like that of other
adjectives with similar meanings, forming a class with them, as (28)–(30) show.
(28) a. vaya cochazo ‘what a big car’
b. qué cochazo ‘what a big car’
c. menudo cochazo ‘what a big car’
(29) a. la dizque ley ‘the supposed law’
b. la supuesta ley ‘the supposed law’
c. la aparente ley ‘the supposed law’
(30) a. un quesque especialista ‘a supposed/false specialist’
b. un aparente especialista ‘a supposed/false specialist’
c. un falso especialista ‘a supposed/false specialist’
5. Conclusions
This article has systematized the possibilities of directionality in grammaticaliza-

tion, showing that there are four directionalities: A. down, B. up, C. neither down
nor up, and D. round trip. Directionality D must be included in the diachronic
panorama, given that it is not uncommon. Many other languages may show evi-
dence of round trip grammaticalization, if we extrapolate from Spanish to other
languages.
The analyses of directionality D have shown that it has its own status, distinct
from the sum of A and B: it has specific sources; it is always a predication; and it
is (at least in Spanish) always reinserted into the grammar in a specific category,
adjective. It also has its own path and distribution, and shows a characteristic and
innovative circular path.
The data show evidence for the fact that grammaticalization is more dynamic
and more multi-dimensional than the specialized literature suggests. The four
directionalities could actually be reducible to simply the dynamic creation and

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recreation of the grammar of a language, from the core relations to the peripheral
relations, and again from the periphery to the core.11
The changes analyzed here have also demonstrated some well-known aspects
of grammaticalization. Grammaticalization is a cumulative or stratified process:
the old or conservative form/meaning and the new or innovative form/meaning
may live together for centuries. Grammaticalization is the major factor responsi-
ble for the creation of new categories in language; additionally, it is asymmetrical
in direction, as even in the round trip cline it is irreversible and follows specific
paths or clines.
Finally, the article has shown that the distributions of forms and constructions
play major roles as conditioning factors in the direction and results of grammat-
icalization. Distribution is as important as meaning. Context and specific distrib-
ution – i.e. forms in specific construction – are the locus at which directionalities
and diachronic processes are shaped.
Acknowledgements
Preliminary versions of this article were read at the International Conference Syntax of the
World’s Languages VII, at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, August 2016, and at the
23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, at the University of Texas, August 2017. I
am indebted to colleagues and audience for criticisms and insightful comments; I am indebted
also to two anonymous reviewers, as their comments improved the analysis. Errors are mine.
Abbreviations
1 first person imp imperative

2 second person ger gerund
3 third person pas passive voice
sg singular pron pronoun
pl plural refl reflexive pronoun
m masculine dat dative pronoun
f feminine acus accusative pronoun
inf infinitive neg negative adverb
11. An issue outside the scope of this article is why all directionalities except directionality
A produce subjective, intersubjective, epistemic forms, or, in a broad sense, modalized forms.
Modality here is understood according to the traditional meaning in Romance linguistics, i.e.
the integration of the speaker’s point of view in the utterance.

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Address for correspondence

Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas
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Circuito Mario de la Cueva s/n
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Table of contents

Editors' corner 317

Toe origin of English clause-initial quotative inversion 318

Four directionalities for grammaticalization: Evidence for new 356

This is a contribution from Journal of Historical Linguistics 8:3

This electronic file may not be altered in any way.

Concepción Company Company

This article offers an analysis and systematization of the relationship

Keywords: directionality, grammaticalization, round trip directionality,

Directionality has, explicitly or implicitly, been a defining feature of grammat-

dedicated to an analysis of the fourth type of directionality in detail. The conclu-

2. Brief state of the art: Grammaticalization and directionality

Certain well-known facts pertaining to the relationship between directionality

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

reconstruction (Haspelmath 2004: 24). Second, unidirectionality is backed up

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

2000 onwards, there have been strong criticisms to unidirectionality (Janda

1. Secondary grammaticalization is understood in two ways: “Cases of grammaticalization

matics, cognition, and construction grammar in grammaticalization (Bybee

3. Four directionalities for grammaticalization

Spanish attests four types of directionality in grammaticalization, understood as

Table 1. Directionalities of grammaticalization

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

The four directionalities can be broadly characterized as an entrance into

4. Four directionalities for grammaticalization

4.1 Down in the cline

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

b. E quando la uio, marauillos ella e todos los que ý

As grammaticalization progressed in the 15th–16th centuries, the locative y

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

In summary, the change consisted of hay replacing ha and of y being eliminated as

4.2 Up in the cline

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

(7) a. De que Blasillo ande al escuela me e holgado mucho

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

(9) Esta señora no se anda con bromas

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

b. –¿Y eso es todo el problema? – Ándale, exactamente eso

In summation, in upgrading directionality, the direction is sentence grammar

4.3 Neither down nor up

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

b. Los jueces y magistrados, mientras se hallen disfrutando de la

Mientras has an innovative conditional meaning in (14). The conjunction intro-

In summation, the directionality of the change is as follows: sentence grammar

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

4.4 Up and down, round trip: A new directionality in grammaticalization

There are some changes in which grammaticalization exhibits a directionality that

Table 2. Round trip directionality

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

c. (i) Noun phrase + relative sentence que + copulative sentence >

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

b. Se dice que la prosperidad material trae la cultura y la

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company

© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company