Grammaticalization

In historical linguistics, grammaticalisation (also known as grammaticisation or grammatisation) is a process of linguistic change by which a content word (lexical morpheme) changes into a function word or further into a grammatical affix. Involved in the process are various semantic changes (especially bleaching) and phonological changes typical of high-frequency words.

Common grammaticalisation chains include the evolution of nouns (such as positional or body part words) to prepositions, prepositions to inflectional affixes on nouns (noun declension); and the evolution of nouns to pronouns, pronouns to inflectional affixes on verbs (verbal conjugation); and finally deflexion, the disappearance of those inflectional affixes altogether. At this point new nouns may start evolving into new inflections.

Hypotheses

A traditional explanation proposed by linguists is that language change involves imperfect language acquisition by new generations of speakers. While this usually occurs in the first few years of a child\'s language acquisition period, the process can occur later on. For example, the Japanese honorific system, which historically has been learned upon reaching adulthood^{[citation needed]}, has gone through repeated cycles of grammaticalization, suggesting that something else is going on.

It is now commonly proposed that grammaticalization is a function of frequency of use: It is hypothesized that words found together with a high frequency come to be cognitively processed as single units, and that these units then evolve as individual words. For example, the highly frequent expression [be] going to [verb] as a future marker has evolved into [be] gonna [verb], especially in casual speech, while the word go as a main verb is unaffected by this change. Likewise, the most common form of be used with this expression, first-person singular I\'m gonna [verb], have contracted to I\'m\'onna [verb] or even to I\'ma^{[citation needed]}, whereas the other persons have not done this.

The unidirectionality hypothesis proposes that these chains only go in one direction, that for example inflectional affixes do not give rise to prepositions or pronouns. There are, however, contradictions to this hypothesis, such as in the development of Irish Gaelic with the derivation of the 1st person plural pronoun muid from the historic inflectional affix -mid (as in táimid "we are"), and the derivation of the object pronouns from historic object person affixes, such as tú from -t- in verbal complexes such as no-t-charaím "I love you".

In Grammaticalisation as Optimization, Paul Kiparsky argues that grammaticalization is best understood as a type of non examplar-based optimization. While he considers analogy as examplar-based optimization, grammaticalization would be an optimization based on the principles of Universal Grammar.

Mechanisms

There are four related mechanisms that are involved in grammaticalisation:

• Desemanticisation — The broadening or abstraction of meaning or content
• Extension — Use in new contexts.
• Decategorialisation — Loss of morphosyntactic properties
• Erosion — Loss of phonetic substance

Examples

• In English, the word "go" became a change-of-state marker (e.g. "He went home" vs. "He went mad") and a future tense marker ("I am going to the store" vs. "I am going to eat", contracted to "I\'m gonna eat").
• In French, "ici" ("here") became a demonstrative marker, e.g. "Il est ici" ("He is here") and "Cet homme-ci" ("This man-PROXIMATE"). Also in French, as the verbal agreement system eroded, the use of subject pronouns became obligatory, and these pronouns are now clitics and can no longer be used on their own (the forms that can are different).

See also

• cline (linguistics) which notes "cline of grammaticalization"

References

• Heine, Bernd and Kuteva, T. (2002) World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, Cambridge University Press
• Hopper, Paul J., and Traugott, Elizabeth C. (1993) Grammaticalization. Cambridge University Press.
• Heine, Bernd; Claudi, Ulrike; and Hünnemeyer, Friederike (1991) Grammaticalization: A Conceptual Framework. University of Chicago Press.
• Fischer, Olga; Muriel Norde and Harry Perridon (2004). 59 Up and down the Cline – The Nature of Grammaticalization. John Benjamins, 406 pages. ISBN 9789027229687. 

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