Towards a Typology of Diachronic Sources of Adversative Markers

This paper is dedicated to the diachronic sources of adversative markers in the world’s languages. It presents a typological classification of meanings from which the linguistic units that have the meanings ‘but’, ‘however’, ‘nevertheless’ or ‘whereas’ (the meanings ‘но’, ‘однако’) have apparently developed. The classification includes the following sources, which are absent from the previous classifications that we have consulted (or need refinement): hesitant substitution (‘rather, more like’), focalization (‘exactly’), invariable outcome (‘be that as it may’), absence of a hindrance (‘without hindrance’), and also such discourse functions as repetition (‘again’), transition (‘anyway, now’) and continuity (‘next’). The distinction between four semantic types of adversative coordination (concessive, substitutive, oppositive and argumentative) that we make allows us to show the processes of grammaticalization in more detail. We sum up the apparent semantic shifts by putting them onto a semantic map. Our observations are based on the established examples of diachronic semantic shifts, etymological data, and instances of synchronic polysemy.