Introduction
One of the most fascinating and intriguing features of linguistic interaction is the widely recognized fact that we, as speakers, frequently use language to convey much more than what we actually utter. Put differently, not every scrap of meaning we want to convey to our interlocutors must be explicitly expressed. Consider the following made-up conversational exchange:
(1)A: Are you going to the beach this afternoon?
B: I have to work.
B's response to A's question does not say that B is not going to the beach, but rather that she has to work. However, just as if she had answered with a simple “No,” the implication of her response is clear: she is not going to the beach. The implied meaning is inferred correctly by speaker A, who, by not pursuing the matter further, would appear to be satisfied with B's reply. As this simple example shows, it is not possible to grasp what our interlocutors mean without knowing what they have implied in addition to what they have said.
Starting from the premise of usage-based linguistics that language change originates in language use, it will become apparent from the contents in this chapter that “implicatures” and “inferences” play a decisive role in semantic change and that meaning shifts involved in processes such as metonymization, metaphorization, semanticization, subjectification, and intersubjectification – all of which will be discussed in the following sections – owe much to what speakers “implicate” and to what addressees infer from those implicatures in the context of speaker–hearer negotiation of meaning.
The outline of the chapter is as follows. First, I discuss the role that pragmatic inferencing plays in semantic change, paying special attention to the most relevant inferential-based theories of change, in particular to Traugott's “Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change.” In the next section, I examine in detail the processes of subjectification and intersubjectification and their relation to grammaticalization, providing illustrative examples from different stages in the history of English.
The final section of the chapter reviews in greater detail four selected areas where subjectification and/or intersubjectification are found to be at work: epistemic modals, like-parentheticals, adverbial clauses introduced by the subordinator while, and expletives. This small selection of examples will provide you with further insight into how (inter)subjectification operates in various domains.