The grammaticalization of Mainland Scandinavian MAYBE

Abstract

This paper is concerned with epistemic adverbs of the MAYBE type (deriving from a modal auxiliary ‘can’ or ‘may’ + a main verb meaning ‘happen’ or ‘be’) in Mainland Scandinavian. MAYBE is a sentence adverb that occurs both in V2 and non-V2 clauses. In non-V2 clauses, MAYBE is the first constituent followed by a clause which has subordinate word order. In V2 clauses, MAYBE can be any constituent except the second one. Swedish MAYBE may also occur in non-V2 clauses in which it is the second constituent, i.e., MAYBE occupies the position of the finite verb. This clause type is not available in Norwegian and Danish. I will outline the etymology, development and grammaticalization path of Mainland Scandinavian MAYBE and argue that the coexistence V2 and non-V2 clauses with MAYBE is due to different stages of grammaticalization in the development of MAYBE.