Grammaticalization of the marginal modal verb ought to: A corpus-based approach

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to address grammatical functions and semantic extensions of the marginal modal verb ought to. Ought is derived from the lexical verb agan 'to possess' in OE (Old English) and grammaticalized into the marginal modal verb. The form agan to + nonfinite complement in OE designated 'to owe' and became the direct source from which the deontic meaning of ought to stemmed from the origin by the mechanisms of reanalysis and pragmatic inference. Although ought to has developed into its functions from deonticity to epistemicity, this paper will argue that hypothesis, advisability, suitability, and politeness are also a wide range of functions of ought to. It is argued that the direction from deonticity to epistemicity, and from deoncity to hypothesis, advisability, suitability, and politeness are on the developmental cline from speaker-orientation to speech-act orientation, and from subjectification to intersubjectification. This paper attempts to investigate synchronic and diachronic changes of ought to in normalized frequency per million words with the help of the authentic corpus data. The diachronic data of PNP-collocates and the synchronic data of adverb-collocates are employed to show collocational strengths with ought to. The usage-based corpus research corroborates our arguments on diachronic trajectories of the marginal modal verb ought to, ranging from speaker-orientation to speech-act orientation, and from subjectification to intersubjectification. (Chung-Ang University)