Time and truth

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Detges
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Meaning Change ◽  
Discourse Strategies ◽  
The Invisible

This paper is concerned with the “invisible hand” behind the polygenetic pathways of semantic change in grammaticalization. A comparison between Old English habban + Past Participle and Spanish tener + Past Participle brings to light specific discourse strategies which speakers use resultatives for. On the basis of this analysis, the paper re-examines the problem of explaining the shift from non-temporal to temporal meaning. It is argued that this shift is brought about by some very basic discourse strategies which are strong motives for repeated meaning change in the same direction.

The Invisible Hand and the Cunning of Reason

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edna Ullmann-Margalit
Keyword(s):  
Invisible Hand ◽  
The Invisible

The idea of the invisible hand has had an impact not only on the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries but on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as well, and it has had a curious ideological career: in previous centuries it had been used to promote ideals of secular, enlightened progress, while in the twentieth and the twenty-first, it is used inversely to promote conservative reverence toward traditions. There are two main models for invisible-hand explanations, and the current, inverse, ideological use of the idea of the invisible hand by conservative circles as against liberals and social planners springs from not distinguishing between the two models.

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