The counterfactual life cycle : cyclicity, pragmatics, and modality
- Author
- Ezra la Roi (UGent)
- Organization
- Project
- Abstract
- Whereas most research has exclusively focused on counterfactual conditionals from a synchronic and/or typological perspective, I provide a synthesis of the life cycles of counterfactual constructions. They first develop (1) past-referring counterfactuality, subsequently develop (2) non-past counterfactuality, and, lastly, become (3) unstable, which may trigger reinforcement, loss of counterfactuality or substitution. Based on corpus evidence from the history of Ancient Greek (VIII BCE – III CE) and Indo-European languages, I show that different types of counterfactual constructions go through all three stages of the life cycle, are subject to different diachronic processes (e.g. innovation, insubordination, reinforcement, contact-induced change), pragmatic mechanisms (e.g. quantity implicature, temporal implicature semanticization, expressive enrichment), and ‘spread’ their usage throughout the synchronic system of a language, especially via (analogical) spread to new syntactic contexts and pragmatic extension to indirect inferential patterns. Also, I show that the speed of substitutions depends on factors such as mood syncretism and prescriptivism.
- Keywords
- counterfactuality, cyclicity, pragmatics, modality, ancient greek, indo-european languages, diachronic typology, insubordination, implicature
Citation
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01JE3PGKNG3G68W1S7EJQC3A3Y
- MLA
- la Roi, Ezra. “The Counterfactual Life Cycle : Cyclicity, Pragmatics, and Modality.” Cyclic Change in Grammar and Discourse, edited by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Richard Waltereit, vol. 54, Oxford University Press, 2025.
- APA
- la Roi, E. (2025). The counterfactual life cycle : cyclicity, pragmatics, and modality. In M.-B. M. Hansen & R. Waltereit (Eds.), Cyclic change in grammar and discourse (Vol. 54). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Chicago author-date
- Roi, Ezra la. 2025. “The Counterfactual Life Cycle : Cyclicity, Pragmatics, and Modality.” In Cyclic Change in Grammar and Discourse, edited by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Richard Waltereit. Vol. 54. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Chicago author-date (all authors)
- la Roi, Ezra. 2025. “The Counterfactual Life Cycle : Cyclicity, Pragmatics, and Modality.” In Cyclic Change in Grammar and Discourse, ed by. Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Richard Waltereit. Vol. 54. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Vancouver
- 1.la Roi E. The counterfactual life cycle : cyclicity, pragmatics, and modality. In: Hansen M-BM, Waltereit R, editors. Cyclic change in grammar and discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2025.
- IEEE
- [1]E. la Roi, “The counterfactual life cycle : cyclicity, pragmatics, and modality,” in Cyclic change in grammar and discourse, vol. 54, M.-B. M. Hansen and R. Waltereit, Eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025.
@incollection{01JE3PGKNG3G68W1S7EJQC3A3Y,
abstract = {{Whereas most research has exclusively focused on counterfactual conditionals from a synchronic and/or typological perspective, I provide a synthesis of the life cycles of counterfactual constructions. They first develop (1) past-referring counterfactuality, subsequently develop (2) non-past counterfactuality, and, lastly, become (3) unstable, which may trigger reinforcement, loss of counterfactuality or substitution. Based on corpus evidence from the history of Ancient Greek (VIII BCE – III CE) and Indo-European languages, I show that different types of counterfactual constructions go through all three stages of the life cycle, are subject to different diachronic processes (e.g. innovation, insubordination, reinforcement, contact-induced change), pragmatic mechanisms (e.g. quantity implicature, temporal implicature semanticization, expressive enrichment), and ‘spread’ their usage throughout the synchronic system of a language, especially via (analogical) spread to new syntactic contexts and pragmatic extension to indirect inferential patterns. Also, I show that the speed of substitutions depends on factors such as mood syncretism and prescriptivism.}},
author = {{la Roi, Ezra}},
booktitle = {{Cyclic change in grammar and discourse}},
editor = {{Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard and Waltereit, Richard}},
isbn = {{9780198939054}},
keywords = {{counterfactuality,cyclicity,pragmatics,modality,ancient greek,indo-european languages,diachronic typology,insubordination,implicature}},
language = {{eng}},
publisher = {{Oxford University Press}},
series = {{Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics}},
title = {{The counterfactual life cycle : cyclicity, pragmatics, and modality}},
volume = {{54}},
year = {{2025}},
}