Polishjakoby: an Exotic Similative-Reportive Doughnut? Tracing the Pathway and Conditions of Its Rise

Of similative origin, Polish jakoby derives from the connective jako ‘how, that’ univerbated with the irrealis enclitic by . From the earliest attested stages (late 14th century) into the 17th century, jakoby was used as a comparison marker and as a subordinator of manner or purpose clauses. The former use has persisted, and the latter was ousted. After the 16th century jakoby further evolved into a reportive marker, as a particle or complementizer. Contrary to what pathways explaining the connection between similative and evidential marking would suggest, jakoby ’s now predominant function as a reportive marker was apparently not prepared by inferential use, nor was its complementizer function mediated by a purpose function. Instead, purpose and reportive complementizers belong to different “branches”, both of which can be motivated by an indiscriminate similative-manner function. The evidence in favor of this derives from a systematic evaluation of extant research and a corpus study covering almost the entire period from 1600 to our day. A crucial moment to understanding jakoby ’s functional changes is the insight that similatives can acquire propositional scope prior to entering the evidential domain and marking a metonymic relation between speech acts and epistemic attitudes expressed by the former.