The Semantics of Grammaticalization

A Case Study on the Danish Verb Prøve 'try'

Abstract

The primary meaning of the Danish verb prøve is “to use one’s best ability to do a certain activity or to reach something; make an attempt”; nevertheless, it is also used about activities that do not require one’s best ability. In these cases, it can be argued, the verb has been grammaticalized. The first aim of this paper is to describe the relationship between the literal and the grammaticalized meanings of the verb using NSM (natural semantic metalanguage), based on corpus examples and speaker judgements. Data have shown that the grammaticalized meaning of prøve is reduced when used in the imperative, because it does not contain the assumptions of the speaker as does the non- grammaticalized meaning. On the other hand, the grammaticalized meaning has acquired a new pragmatic feature, namely the friendly attitude of the speaker. The second aim is to describe how the grammaticalized meaning of prøve is related to the Danish “meaning universe”. The analysis has shown that the grammaticalized meaning of prøve includes the element “the speaker wants the conversational partner to feel something good”, which is in accordance with Danish cultural values