The Limits of Grammaticalization

The Limits of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Anna Giacalone Ramat
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902722935X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The earliest use of the term “grammaticalization” was to refer to the process whereby lexical words of a language (such as English keep in “he keeps bees”) become grammatical forms (such as the auxiliary in “he keeps looking at me”). Changes of this kind, which involve semantic fading and a downshift from a major to a minor category, have generally been agreed to come under the heading of grammaticalization. But other changes that equally contribute to new grammatical forms do not involve this kind of fading. In recent years, a debate has arisen over how to constrain the term theoretically. Is grammaticalization to be distinguished from “lexicalization”, the creation and fixing of new words out of older patterns of compounding? If so, how is the line to be drawn between a form that is grammatical and one that is lexical? Should the term “grammaticalization” be extended to the study of the origins of grammatical constructions in general? If so, it will have to include broader issues such as word order change and the reanalysis of phrases. What principles govern these processes? Is grammaticalization a unidirectional event, or can change occur in the reverse direction? The authors of the papers in this volume approach these important questions from a variety of data types, including historical texts, creoles, and a typologically broad sample of modern and ancient languages.

The Limits of Grammaticalization

The Limits of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Anna Giacalone Ramat
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902722935X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
The earliest use of the term “grammaticalization” was to refer to the process whereby lexical words of a language (such as English keep in “he keeps bees”) become grammatical forms (such as the auxiliary in “he keeps looking at me”). Changes of this kind, which involve semantic fading and a downshift from a major to a minor category, have generally been agreed to come under the heading of grammaticalization. But other changes that equally contribute to new grammatical forms do not involve this kind of fading. In recent years, a debate has arisen over how to constrain the term theoretically. Is grammaticalization to be distinguished from “lexicalization”, the creation and fixing of new words out of older patterns of compounding? If so, how is the line to be drawn between a form that is grammatical and one that is lexical? Should the term “grammaticalization” be extended to the study of the origins of grammatical constructions in general? If so, it will have to include broader issues such as word order change and the reanalysis of phrases. What principles govern these processes? Is grammaticalization a unidirectional event, or can change occur in the reverse direction? The authors of the papers in this volume approach these important questions from a variety of data types, including historical texts, creoles, and a typologically broad sample of modern and ancient languages.

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization PDF Author: Paul J. Hopper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521804219
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This is a general introduction to grammaticalization, the change whereby lexical terms and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions. The authors synthesize work from several areas of linguistics. The second edition has been thoroughly revised with substantial updates on theoretical and methodological issues that have arisen in the decade since the first edition, and includes a significantly expanded bibliography. Particular attention is paid to recent debates over directionality in change and the role of grammaticalization in creolization.

Perspectives on Grammaticalization

Perspectives on Grammaticalization PDF Author: William Pagliuca
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027276757
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This is the second of two volumes deriving from papers presented at the Nineteenth Annual UWM linguistics Symposium held in Milwaukee in 1990. It focuses on the evolution of grammatical form and meaning from lexical material, which has reinvigorated historical analysis and theory and led to advances in the understanding of the relation between diachrony and universals. The richness and potential of some of the leading approaches to grammaticalization are here illustrated in thirteen selected papers.

Aspects of Grammaticalization

Aspects of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Daniel Olmen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110492342
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
This volume advances our understanding of two highly debated aspects of grammaticalization: its relation to (inter)subjectification and its directionality. These aspects are studied with respect to such phenomena as auxiliaries, discourse markers, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns. Bringing together a wide range of languages, the collection provides insight into the crucial dimensions of grammaticalization research.

The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization

The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Heiko Narrog
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199586780
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 948

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Book Description
This book presents a critical assessment of research on grammaticalization, a central element in the process by which grammars are created. Leading scholars discuss its core theoretical and methodological bases, report on work in the field, and point to directions for new research. They represent every relevant theoretical perspective and approach.

Ten Lectures on a Diachronic Constructionalist Approach to Discourse Structuring Markers

Ten Lectures on a Diachronic Constructionalist Approach to Discourse Structuring Markers PDF Author: Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004507051
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 539

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Book Description
To date little work has been done on pragmatics within cognitive linguistics, especially from a historical perspective. The lectures presented in this volume give the first systematic account of how pragmatics can be incorporated into cognitive linguistics using a Diachronic Construction Grammar perspective. The author combines detailed study of the historical development of Discourse Structuring Markers like all the same, after all and by the way and propose ways in which to model them. A number of topics are addressed including what a usage based approach to language change is, differences between innovation and change, how to think about analogy and networks, how combinations of Discourse Structuring Markers like now then became a unit, and whether clause-initial and -final positions are constructions. Refinements of Diachronic Construction Grammar are proposed and tested.

World Lexicon of Grammaticalization

World Lexicon of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Tania Kouteva
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107136245
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 647

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Book Description
Based on analysis of more than 1,000 languages, this volume reconstructs more than 500 processes of grammatical change in the languages of the world.

New Reflections on Grammaticalization

New Reflections on Grammaticalization PDF Author: Ilse Wischer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027297215
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
The contributions in this volume cover a wide range of theoretical and methodological issues and raise a number of new questions that indicate the future direction of grammaticalization studies. The volume focuses on issues such as grammaticalization and lexicalization; the unidirectionality hypothesis; the issue of the relevance of contexts for grammaticalization; the description of grammaticalization paths. Much of the current work concentrates on such categories, as discourse markers, honorifics or classifiers, which have not previously been central to works on grammaticalization. Other studies take a new perspective on known grammaticalization paths by applying concepts adopted from other linguistic fields, such as prototype theory, morphocentricity, or by discussing their findings from a comparative or typological angle, presenting data from a large number of languages, often based on extensive empirical investigations of written and spoken text corpora.

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization PDF Author: Heiko Narrog
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191065080
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This textbook introduces and explains the fundamental issues, major research questions, and current approaches in the study of grammaticalization - the development of new grammatical forms from lexical items, and of further grammatical functions from existing grammatical forms. Grammaticalization has been a vibrant research field in recent years, and has proven effective in explaining a wide range of phenomena; it has even been claimed that the only true language universals are diachronic, and are related to cross-linguistic processes of grammaticalization. The chapters provide a detailed account of the major issues in the field: foundational questions such as directionality, criteria and parameters of grammaticalization, and phases and cycles; the much-debated issue of the motivations behind grammaticalization, including the role of language contact and typological influences; the advantages and disadvantages of different theoretical approaches; and the relationship between grammaticalization and process such as lexicalization, exaptation, and the development of discourse markers. Each chapter offers guidance on further reading, and concludes with study questions to encourage further discussion; there is also a glossary of key terminology in the field. Thanks to its comprehensive approach, the volume will serve as both a textbook for undergraduate and graduate students and a valuable reference work for researchers in the field.

Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English

Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English PDF Author: Hans Lindquist
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588115232
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Grammaticalization is an important concept in general and typological linguistics and a prominent type of explanation in historical linguistics. For historical corpus linguists, grammaticalization theory provides a frame of orientation in their effort to analyze and systematize a fast-accumulating mass of data. Students of grammaticalization have become increasingly aware of the potential of existing corpora and established corpus-linguistic methodology for their work. This book continues and develops the dialogue between the two fields. All the contributions are based on extensive use of various electronic corpora. Relating corpus practices to recent theoretical concerns of grammaticalization studies they deal with grammaticalization and historical sociolinguistics, lexicalization and grammaticalization, layering, frequency, grammaticalization and dialects, degrammaticalization and grammaticalization in a contrastive perspective. The papers show that a synthesis of corpus methodology and grammaticalization studies leads to new and interesting insights about the mechanisms of language change and the communicative functions of language.