Ellipsis and Functional Shifts

This paper addresses the issues centering around grammaticalization and subjectification involving sentential endings. Among the large inventory of sentential endings with diverse functions are those that constitute a unique sub-paradigm whose members have been grammaticalized from complementizers, which, in turn, had been grammaticalized from combinations of sentential endings, a locution verb and a connective (Rhee 2007b). This type of serial change shows an interesting path along which the forms traveled changing their functions from sentential endings to complementizers and back to sentential endings. However, these sentential endings that returned to the original functional category by no means carry the identical semantico-pragmatic functions. The difference is largely due to the acquisition of new meanings en route through extensive subjectification (Traugott 1989). What is involved in grammaticalization of the initial [sentential ending > complementizer] change was extensive leveling of intersubjectification, i.e. counter-intersubjectification. The use of the former complementizer as a sentential ending is also a unique development, and the emphatic force of the new sentential ending is largely derived from the fact that its original function was to bring a reported speech into the matrix clause. The speaker, by employing this new type of complementizer-turned sentential endings, is presenting this new proposition as if it had been already said and it were being repeated this time. This paper discusses various theoretical implications that this phenomenon raises with special reference to the unidirectionality hypothesis in grammaticalization scholarship.