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This paper aims to contribute to the debates about the nature of the speaker-related meanings of the mental state predicates, on the basis of a diachronic corpus study into the semantic evolution of five such verbs in Dutch. The analyses show that each of these verbs develops its own spe-cific profile in terms of a limited set of clearly distinguishable speaker-related meanings, viz. epistemic modality, evidentiality, and ‘subjectivi-ty’. Each of these meanings is moreover characterized by a distinctive di-achronic path. The study thus also demonstrates the independent status of ‘subjectivity’ as a meaning category., Diese Untersuchung hat zum Ziel, einen Beitrag zur Debatte über die Art der sprecherbezogenen Bedeutungen von Verben des Denkens und Erkennens zu leisten, indem sie versucht, mithilfe einer diachronischen Korpusstudie die Entwicklung von fünf solchen Verben in der niederländischen Sprache darzustellen. Forschungsresultate zeigen, dass jedes der untersuchten Verben ein eigenes Profil im Sinne einer begrenzten Reihe von untereinander deutlich unterscheidbaren sprecherbezogenen Bedeutungen entwickelt, nämlich epistemische Modalität, Evidentialität und Subjektivität. Jede dieser Bedeutungen ist außerdem durch einen distinktiven diachronischen Entwicklungsweg gekennzeichnet. Zusätzlich veranschaulicht die Untersuchung den selbstständigen Status der Subjektivität als Bedeutungskategorie.

This paper addresses the question how to define the notion of a "paradigm", as a cognitively real phenomenon. The discussion is based on the case of a set of forms from a linguistic class that is not part of the traditional domain of "paradigmhood" (i.e. inflectional morphology): the modal auxiliaries in Dutch. The paper presents the results of a few studies into the diachronic evolution of these forms, grammatically and semantically, showing how a subset of them has gradually accumulated shared features and developed an internal division of labor, thus displaying active group behavior.

This article ventures into the status of 'memory' as a semantic category in the range of the evidential meanings.

Deze discussiebijdrage is een reactie op het opiniestuk over ‘Crisis in de taalkunde?’ van Freek Van de Velde en Joop van der Horst. Het betoogt dat de huidige situatie in de taalkunde misschien iets minder dramatisch en vooral heel wat minder uitzonderlijk en zorgwekkend is dan deze auteurs suggereren.

In de traditionele visie bestaat het systeem van de modale hulpwerkwoorden in het Nederlands uit zes vormen: 'kunnen', 'mogen', 'moeten', 'hoeven', 'zullen', en 'willen'. Een analyse van de historische ontwikkeling van deze vormen roept de vraag op of het terecht is dat ze samen als één grammaticaal systeem worden beschouwd. Enkele recente studies tonen dat de eerste vier werkwoorden een groepsdynamiek vertonen, zowel grammaticaal als semantisch, maar dat 'zullen' en 'willen' daar nauwelijks of niet aan deelnemen. In deze bijdrage zetten we de belangrijkste feiten in dit verband op een rijtje.

This paper considers role of grammaticalization and intersubjectification in determining the origin of some modal auxiliaries in Iranian languages. These auxiliaries, based on Nuyts (2005 and further) express deontic necessity, epistemic possibility, participant-inherent necessity, participant-imposed necessity, and situational necessity, which for the ease of access are considered as equivalences to ‘bAjest{n’ (must). Based on the traditional definition of grammaticalization, one might expect these auxiliaries, the same as other auxiliaries to be developed from lexical verbs. However, following this path might violate what Traugott and Dasher (2002), Traugott (1989, 1995 and 2010) and also Byloo and Nuyts (2014) have in mind by (inter) subjectification, where volitional verbs are evolved from modal notions and the related concepts. Both traditional definition of grammaticalization and this reading of intersubjectification are unidirectional and predominantly verify the diachronic path of evolving such modal from volitional verbs. Even though, data from four languages, including Kahangi, Vafsi, Tati, and Semnani, where the modals meaning ‘must’ have the same roots with the volitional verbs meaning ‘want’, being limited to grammaticalization might violate intersubjectification and vice versa, following intersubjectification might exclude grammaticalization. Therefore, here we suggest that these auxiliaries are not developed from the volitional verbs in these; yet, both groups have been simultaneously evolved from a third element in Old Iranian.

(VLID)4347114