Case study: the evolution of auxiliaries from verbs of motion or posture
The Spanish auxiliary verb estar ‘be’ evolved from a content verb meaning ‘stand’. Langacker (1999b: 309) provides the following examples, which show that this verb behaves like the English copula in that it can take subject (or adverbial) complements, for example AP (24a) or PP (24b). The verb estar also functions like the English progressive auxiliary, in that it can also take a present participle (24c).
Recall from Chapter 16 that what distinguishes TEMPORAL RELATIONS (PROCESSES) from ATEMPORAL RELATIONS in Cognitive Grammar is sequential scanning. We also saw in Chapters 17 and 18 that, in the Cognitive Grammar analysis, the role of the verb be is to impose PROCESS status upon otherwise ATEMPORAL RELATIONS like adjectives, prepositions and participles. Langacker (1999b) argues that the path of change from a verb of posture to a be verb involves attenuation of objectivity resulting in loss of subject control and consequent subjectification. The path of evolution proposed by Langacker is schematically represented in (25) and the English examples in (26) provide an illustration of this claim.
In (26a), the situation designated by stand is salient and the event designated by the adverbial subordinate clause gazing into his eyes, headed by the participle gazing, is less salient hence its status as a modifier. In (26b), which contains an attenuated instance of stand that Langacker represents as stand’, the situation designated by stand is still salient, but its objectivity is attenuated because its TR is a static and inanimate entity. It is in this example that the notion of loss of subject control becomes clear: the extent to which the objective construal of the construction is attenuated is closely linked to the properties of the subject (or TR) in terms of animacy, potential for motion and so on. The further attenuation of stand results in a sense that is also devoid of orientation in SPACE, and it is at this point that Langacker suggests the verb of posture evolves into a be verb which has lost its original content meaning but retains its PROCESS (verbal) essence which designates sequential scanning. At this stage, the be verb and the participle merge in terms of expressing a single event or situation (26c).
In summary, although we have only been able to provide a brief sketch of how Langacker’s notion of subjectification (or attenuation of objectivity) may give rise to grammaticalisation, a number of points of contrast emerge in relation to the other approaches to grammaticalisation we have discussed in this chapter. To begin with, while both the metaphorical extension approach and Invited Inferencing Theory place the burden of explanation on metaphor and pragmatic inferencing respectively, Langacker’s explanation has little to say about either of these factors, but focuses the account entirely on how the conceptual system might give rise to grammaticalisation as a consequence of perspective and construal. Secondly, Langacker’s account – most obviously his account of the evolution of be– can be described as a version of the semantic bleaching account that is largely rejected by other cognitively oriented grammaticalisation researchers. Indeed, Langacker ([1991] 2002: 324) explicitly equates semantic attenuation and semantic bleaching.
