| Popis: |
In this article, the development of the imperative form of the verb katsoa ‘to look’ into a particle kato in spoken language is analyzed. This particle has both the function of an attention getter and that of an explanatory connective. The data consists of spontaneous informal conversations among peers. In explaining the change, the authors use the model for grammatical change which was put forward by Brown and Levinson (1988), where the motivation for the change is seen to lie in the conversational situation. They also take up Traugott's hypothesis about the possible direction of grammatical changes. |
