Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

Modal Pathways: A Test Case

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review

Abstract

Recent years have seen increasing discussion of formal semantic approaches to language change, where semantics rather than pragmatics is taken to be the main driving force of historical change. This paper discusses the applicability of such approaches to pathways of change in the modal domain, focusing on the temporal-to-concessive pathway as a test case. A corpus study of the development of concessive ʕadayin ‘still’ in Emergent Modern Hebrew (EMH) is argued to support the semantic approach over an alternative that is based primarily on pragmatic inferencing.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationJerusalem Studies in Philosophy and History of Science
Pages411-432
Number of pages22
DOIs
StatePublished - 2025

Publication series

NameJerusalem Studies in Philosophy and History of Science
VolumePart F11859

Keywords

  • Concessives
  • Hebrew
  • Modality
  • Semantic change

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • History and Philosophy of Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Modal Pathways: A Test Case'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this