'From restructuring verbs to exhortative particles: a Scots case study'

A seminar by Dr Craig Sailor (Trinity College Dublin) as part of the Linguistics Research Seminar Series. (in collaboration with Gary Thoms, NYU) Abstract: To express a command, speakers of certain varieties of Scots and Scottish English can use an English-like imperative clause, or they can use a non-English-like exhortative clause type involving the markers gonnae or wantae: (1) a. Wantae leave me alane.           ‘Leave me alone.’       b. Gonnae drop it right now.            ‘Drop it right now.’ This talk is concerned with the synchronic and diachronic syntax of these Gonnae/Wantae Clauses (henceforth GWCs). Synchronically, we argue that gonnae/wantae are innovative modal verbs expressing exhortative force. We present evidence from a variety of GWCs – those involving negation, overt subjects, and predicate ellipsis – to show that gonnae/wantae occupy an especially high position in the clause, having undergone inversion with the subject (akin to that found in Standard English interrogatives, albeit here with exhortative force). Diachronically, we propose that GWCs derive from reduced questions functioning as ‘concealed imperatives’ (e.g. (Are you) goin’ tae leave me alane, cf. Standard English Will you leave me alone?). In brief, GWCs underwent reanalysis from a biclausal structure into a monoclausal one. Specifically, we present diatopic and diagenerational evidence from the Scots Syntax Atlas suggesting that the initial innovation began with gonnae, which underwent  grammaticalization from an infinitive-embedding lexical verb into a restructuring verb, and then into an exhortative modal auxiliary. Subsequently, and by analogy with this change, wantae has recently begun to follow the same pathway of reanalysis; this is very much still a change-in-progress, as we will show. This study in Scots GWCs therefore provides further evidence of Roberts & Roussou’s (2003) notion of ‘upward reanalysis’, from lexical verbs into functional elements within the periphery of the clause.