Sex hjälpverb och deras historia

In her dissertation Aspektuella hjälpverb i svenskan, Maria Bylin investigates the evolution of six aspectual auxiliaries in Swedish (bruka ‘use to’, tendera ‘tend to’, börja ‘begin’, fortsätta ‘continue’, sluta ‘stop’ and hota ‘threaten’). The study is conducted within the framework of grammaticalization, and Bylin’s primary method is to apply so-called auxiliary tests on a historical material covering texts from the 11th to the 21st century in order to examine when and how each of these verbs developed their auxiliary features. The findings indicate that there are some general tendencies and paths that most or all verbs seem to follow in their development, but that at the same time all verbs under investigation show individual deviations from the predictions created by auxiliation theory. Another goal of the study was to evaluate the validity of different auxiliary tests as indicators of auxiliary function. An important finding here is that the development of most auxiliaries is characterized by layering, i.e. typically, the relevant verbs come to be used in several functions (e.g. both as a main verb and as an auxiliary) simultaneously. A consequence of this is that such tests which indicate the absence of main verb properties reveal merely something about the presence or absence of layering and that hence tests which show the development of new auxiliary properties are more reliable indicators of auxiliary function. For Bylin, the most central criterion of auxiliation is the ability of the auxiliary to function together with a non-finite verb as a single predicate with shared arguments, which is most clearly indicated by the auxiliary’s ability to occur in a passive raising construction. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the more general question of how the category of auxiliaries should be defined and demarcated.