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This dissertation investigates the development of the main Danish modal particles jo, sgu, skam, nu, da, vel, nok
and vist. In Modern Danish, these particles express contextualization instructions, that is, they express how the
utterance relates to the interactive context. In addition to this common content core, they also share several
expression features: they cannot be placed in the pre-field, they occupy the left-most adverbial position in the
middle field, they are obligatorily stressless, and they cannot constitute an answer alone. Finally, the modal
particles are structured in subparadigms whose members share a common semantic core and have the same
topological position relative to other modal particles.
The aim of this dissertation is to trace the development of these modal particles. When do the modal particles
emerge, what meanings constitute their source meanings, and how can the transitions to the new meanings be
explained? In addition to this, I examine how the semantic changes correlate with topological changes and with
grammaticalization. Furthermore, I investigate the emergence of the modal particle paradigm as a whole and
present a mechanism for the paradigmatic integration of new modal particles. I argue that already existing modal
particles facilitate the emergence of new modal particles based on analogy. This contributes to their semantic and
formal alignment resulting in the emergence of the paradigmatic structure.
My analysis of the development of the modal particles primarily follows a qualitative approach: I identify contexts
that indicate the conventional status of new meanings by ruling out older meanings or meanings already reckoned
with. Additionally, I reconstruct the meaning of the modal particle etymons based on information from historical
dictionaries, translations and language comparison.
The results of the dissertation indicate that jo is the oldest modal particle, which begins to occur in the 16th century.
This modal particle emerges based on a temporal meaning ‘always’ in argumentative bridging contexts as well as
language contact with Middle Low German and Early New High German as a case of contact-induced
grammaticalization. I argue that this modal particle constitutes the proto-modal particle, and that it facilitates the
emergence of other modal particles by analogy. For the remaining modal particles, similar argumentative bridging
contexts can be identified, and language contact appears to play a role a recurring role.
I argue that the development of the Danish modal particles can only be understood in an analysis that combines
the perspective of the individual modal particle with that of the emerging paradigm as a whole.