From Latin QUO(D) VELLES to Romagnol Cvël: A Case of Degrammaticalisation from a Free-choice Indefinite to the Noun ‘Thing’1

Abstract

Degrammaticalisation is an oft-dismissed category of language change. In this paper evidence is provided for its existence, its triggers, and its conditions. This case study details the development of an understudied Old Italo-Romance indefinite, covelle, a polarity-sensitive item roughly translating as ‘anything’ which originated from a Latin free relative with Free-Choice interpretation. It is shown that in Old Italo-Romance the original Free Choice use was expanded to further nonveridical contexts. Subsequently, a curious development of covelle in Old Romagnol, a 16th-century Gallo-Italic variety, is examined whereby polar neutralisation (loss of sensitivity to polarity) of the indefinite was taking place. Contextually, a process of degrammaticalisation had begun through which the indefinite pronoun developed into the classifier ‘thing’. In Modern and Contemporary Romagnol cvël is almost exclusively employed as a noun/classifier. It is argued that two parallel processes have initiated a cycle that led cvël to complete degrammaticalisation: (i) the grammaticalization of the old noun for ‘thing’, co(n)sa, into a wh-word, calling for lexical replacement, and (ii) competition from the Negative Concord Item gnit. The development of covelle in Romagnol represents a well-documented case of degrammaticalisation, whose causes and conditions can be thoroughly described and motivated within an interaction with cyclical change.