Gradience, gradualness and grammaticalization
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Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Abstract
This volume is intended to address three questions: (1) How are we to understand the intersection between synchronic gradience and grammaticalization? (2) What insights does grammaticalization offer for assessing the validity of Aarts’s (2007a) claims regarding synchronic gradience, specifically that there is a significant distinction between subsective and intersective gradience? (3) What does the intersection between grammaticalization and synchronic gradience tell us about the hypothesis of structural gradualness, and about whether work on grammaticalization needs reanalysis and analogy/extension, or some other mechanism? In this paper we present an overview of what we consider to be central issues in answering these questions and in developing a theory of micro-changes.
Abstract
This volume is intended to address three questions: (1) How are we to understand the intersection between synchronic gradience and grammaticalization? (2) What insights does grammaticalization offer for assessing the validity of Aarts’s (2007a) claims regarding synchronic gradience, specifically that there is a significant distinction between subsective and intersective gradience? (3) What does the intersection between grammaticalization and synchronic gradience tell us about the hypothesis of structural gradualness, and about whether work on grammaticalization needs reanalysis and analogy/extension, or some other mechanism? In this paper we present an overview of what we consider to be central issues in answering these questions and in developing a theory of micro-changes.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Preface 1
- Gradience, gradualness and grammaticalization 19
- Grammaticalization, the clausal hierarchy and semantic bleaching 45
- Grammatical interference 75
- Category change in English with and without structural change 105
- Features in reanalysis and grammaticalization 129
- How synchronic gradience makes sense in the light of language change (and vice versa) 149
- What can synchronic gradience tell us about reanalysis? 181
- A paradigmatic approach to language and language change 203
- Grammaticalization and the it-cleft construction 221
- Grammaticalization in Chinese 245
- Grammaticalization and models of language 279
- Language index 301
- Subject index 303
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Preface 1
- Gradience, gradualness and grammaticalization 19
- Grammaticalization, the clausal hierarchy and semantic bleaching 45
- Grammatical interference 75
- Category change in English with and without structural change 105
- Features in reanalysis and grammaticalization 129
- How synchronic gradience makes sense in the light of language change (and vice versa) 149
- What can synchronic gradience tell us about reanalysis? 181
- A paradigmatic approach to language and language change 203
- Grammaticalization and the it-cleft construction 221
- Grammaticalization in Chinese 245
- Grammaticalization and models of language 279
- Language index 301
- Subject index 303
