Essay Sample on Book Summary: The Case of Subjectification

This chapter explains how a person can recognize in historical texts when a diverse attested change referred to as subjectification occurs. Subjectification refers to the development of meaning based on the speaker's view (Traugott, 2016). A task for a certain historical work is to observe whether a change has taken place. As noted in the book, a change requires the proper transmission of the innovation to others and the acquisition of it by a population of users of the language. Therefore, a construction grammar is acquired which entails a theory of signs. Constructions contain specific structures as well as sets and schemas of different abstracts. Therefore, subjectification can be linked to change. In the first step in subjectification as in historical work, evidence is gotten from data that is evaluated theoretically or methodologically. Thus, the first step is to come up with a firm grasp of theoretical data and have good synchronic analysis of the data being investigated.

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According to the book, using a theoretical model of subjectification, it is assumed that knowledge among language users is flexible (Traugott, 2016). Therefore, there are some distinctions which are crucial in the study of subjectification. These distinctions include; between subjectivity and subjectification and also linguistic and inherent subjective semantics. Another distinction is the default subjectivity and the expressions that conventional in a subjective way. There are also two fundamental reminders to the subjectification. The fundamentals view subjectification as a historical development which is coded subjectively. On the other hand, subjectivity is coded using speaker's orientation. According to Traugott (2016), the other fundamental point views subjectification as a gradient that typically develops over time. There is three cases of studies which are used to explain an illustrate some of the problems associated with subjectification when it occurs.

The gradual development of BE going to 'future' is also illustrated by the author. BE going has been tested severally. According to Traugott (2016), BE going has become a photo type example of grammaticalization. The book identifies BE going as semantic analysis. The main reason for using it is that it contains steps which can be used by a researcher to find empirical evidence for the subjectification. In standard British and America, the BE going can express motion that has a particular purpose. There is a 'future' BE going which can be reduced to BE going to. Prediction of the future is subject to the speakers epistemic of him being certain. The book quotes Cacoullos and Walker, who illustrates that the Canadians English of BE going depends on several factors. For example, BE going is favored in second person declarative and second person negatives. Studies suggest that for a detailed investigation, the development of subjectification of BE going should be sensitive to various for 'future.'

According to Traugott (2016), during the late fifteenth century, some examples appeared which allowed a temporal interpretation. The first example is of a thief who was going to be hanged, passed before Alexander. A motion expression is the best because the immediate linguistic content is passed. Another example which allowed a temporal interpretation going to die that is ready or in danger to die (Traugott, 2016). On this paraphrase, the change from motion has the intention to a statement, and this may imply that the speaker is very certain that it will occur. Garrett used an example which contained inanimate subjects in the late seventeen centuries as quoted in the book. The examples Garrett used are to enough to explain and suggest conventionalization. We can conclude that BE going is becoming fully-fledged with syntax similar which is similar to other auxiliaries. For more important present purposes, raising is related to the subjectifies and prediction meaning of the 'future.'

The second example is the subjectification of beside and besides. Since the development of BE going is familiar, on the other hand, that of beside and besides is not very familiar. The book explains part of it in some details concerning grammaticalization. Besides is used mostly as a preposition with a concrete spatial meaning or an abstract meaning. On the other hand, is used as a preposition using sense of 'except other than,' although it is used as an adverb. The subjectification of churl is another example. This example has been questioned by De Snet and Verstraete on how useful it is for Traugott and Traugott and Dasher to a lump lexical example like changes to boor and villain (Traugott, 2016). One particular difference that De Smet and Verstraete cite that the lexical changes 'does not' contain changes in a morphosyntactic way. Lexical examples like villain may also originate from subjective perspectives, although over time it may be used with a socially wide accepted meaning.

In conclusion, it is viewed that there is no significant difference between subjectification concerning grammatical development and lexical. These three cases explain that subjectification occurs in a sequence of greater changes, and not all alleged criteria can apply. The author suggested that a distinction should be made between 'ideational' subjectivity and interpersonal subjectivity. These words interpersonal subjectivity accounts for the fact when a person is using connective, and pragmatic markers of the speaker, there is an interaction with the interlocutor. Subjectification is likely to occur into scalar domains like modality, quantifiers, the evolution of character and pragmatic markers.

References

Traugott, E. (2016). Identifying micro-changes in a particular linguistic change-type: The case of subjectification. In M. Kyto & P. Pahta (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics, pp. 376-389). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139600231.023