From Lexical Verb ‘fear’ to Epistemic Adverbial ‘perhaps, maybe, possibly’: On the Grammaticalization of Malay kut (< takut ‘fear’), Mandarin kong3 pa4 (恐怕) and Cantonese tai2 paa3 (睇怕)

Previous studies have identified several robust strategies that give rise to pragmatic markers at the right periphery (RP) of utterances—often referred to as sentence final particles. One pathway involves the reanalysis of nominalizers into sentence final mood markers (e.g. Yap & Matthews 2008; Yap & Grunow-Hårsta 2010; Yap, Grunow-Hårsta & Wrona forthcoming and papers therein). A second pathway involves the reanalysis of ‘say’ verbs as sentence final evidential markers (e.g. Simpson & Wu 2002 on Taiwanese kong; Wang, Katz & Chen 2003 on Mandarin shuo; Yeung 2006 on Cantonese waa). A third pathway involves the clausal integration of terminal evaluative clauses such as er yi (yi), hao le, ba le, suan le and de le (e.g. Yap, Wang & Lam 2010). In this paper, we examine yet another pathway, namely the semantic extension of lexical verbs expressing fear to epistemic adverbials expressing uncertainty and possibility.

We examine this development in Malay (an Austronesian language), and in Mandarin and Cantonese (both Sinitic languages). As seen in examples (1) to (3) below, these languages show a development in which a higher (matrix) clause with a mental/attitudinal verb such as ‘fear’ is reinterpreted as an epistemic and subjective adverbial expression in utterance-final position. In both Mandarin and Cantonese, as seen in (2b) and (3b) respectively, but not in Malay, the epistemic use of the ‘fear’ expressions could also appear in preverbal position. Malay instead allows a postpredicate position for kut that is more tightly integrated to the clause structure, as seen in (1d). We account for this language-specific difference in terms of the higher degree of grammaticalization in the case of Malay kut relative to its Mandarin and Cantonese counterparts.

The findings from our analysis are consistent with observed tendencies in grammaticalization, whereby constructions with propositional information frequently develop extended uses within the pragmatic domain (e.g. Traugott 1989, 1995, inter alia). Of additional interest in this paper is the tendency for right periphery (RP) pragmatic markers in Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese to be more grammaticalized in terms of degree of bonding (or clausal integration) compared to the parenthetical-type RP pragmatic markers in languages such as English (e.g. Malay Dia tak datang kut vs. English He won’t come, (*I’m) afraid). This asymmetry is partially accounted for in terms of the differential frequency of null subjects in each of these languages, with languages such as English favoring overt expression of the subject and hence restricting processes involving right periphery (RP) clausal integration.