Presentation (3).pptx
- 2. What is grammaticalization? In its broadest sense, grammaticalization is ‘the process by which grammar is created or the study of this process. it is defined as the development from lexical to grammatical forms, and from grammatical to even more grammatical forms. It is a process of language change by which words representing objects and actions (i.e. nouns and verbs) become grammatical markers (Affixes, preposition). It’s a process in which a lexical word or a word cluster loses some or all of its lexical meaning and starts to fulfil a more grammatical function. Where grammaticalization takes place, nouns and verbs which carry certain lexical meaning develop over time into grammatical items such as auxiliaries, case markers, inflections, and Sentence connectives!
- 3. A well-known example of grammaticalization is that of the process in which the lexical cluster let us, for example in "let us eat", is reduced to let's as in "let's you and me fight". Here, the phrase has lost its lexical meaning of "allow us" and has become an auxiliary introducing a suggestion, the pronoun 'us' reduced first to a suffix and then to an unanalyzed phoneme.
- 4. Term introduction? What is the purpose of Grammaticalization? The term grammaticalization was introduced by French linguist Antoine Meillet in his 1912 study "L'evolution des formes grammaticales." According to Meillet, the aim of studying Grammaticalization is to investigate 'the transition of autonomous words into the role of grammatical elements’.
- 5. Types of Grammaticalization: 1. the development of syntax out of discourse including the fixation of word order 2. the grammaticalization of lexical items into function words 3. clause combining and clause fusion 4. subjectification
- 6. Some current issues: 1. Insights from Construction Grammar 2. Motivations for the Onset of Grammaticalization 3. Revisiting Analogy and Reanalysis 4. Areal and Contact Studies
- 7. Grammaticalization as reduction And expansion: Reduction and expansion in a construction grammar framework for grammaticalization.
- 8. Two contrasting approaches have developed over the past thirty years of grammaticalization research. On one hand, There is a line of research maintaining that grammaticalization is essentially a process of reduction. In this approach, grammaticalizing expressions are said to reduce and freeze in form. They become more dependent on, and later even obligatory in particular syntagmatic contexts. Meaning changes are thought of in terms of semantic bleaching, i.e. the loss of concrete meaning. On the other hand, there is a tradition of research emphasizing that grammaticalization involves expansion. In the 1980s, some researchers stressed the expansive nature of grammaticalization, focusing on the role of pragmatic enrichment/strengthening and on the emergence of polysemy and multifunctions.