Discourse markers between grammar and lexicon. Two Ancient Egyptian cases for (de)grammaticalization?
Résumé
The diachrony of Ancient Egyptian allows us to study the emergence of a few discourse markers. Two case studies show an evolution that traditional grammaticalization approaches would term counter- directional. They also illustrate the role played by formal analogy together with pragmatic inference in shaping specific outcomes of change. A model for describing the semantics of discourse markers is proposed, which can account for their polysemy in terms of an underspecified lexical core meaning and contextual parameters. Their characteristic function is seen as relating a discourse segment with some point of reference. The variation of the latter, especially its explicit or implicit character, results in different uses that are typical for such markers. The impact of the proposed approach on a grammati- calization analysis of discourse markers is briefly evaluated.