John Benjamins Publishing Company
Grammaticalization, the clausal hierarchy and semantic bleaching
Abstract
This paper takes questions regarding gradience and gradualness to be questions concerning the nature of grammatical categories. A notion of grammatical category is pursued which is not gradient, but rather more “traditional” in the sense that category membership is an instance of standard set membership. In order to deal with some of the empirical difficulties, both synchronic and diachronic, in consistently assigning category membership across all lexical formatives, a fine-grained and elaborate system of categories, following on from Cinque’s (1999) influential work on the clausal hierarchy, is adopted. In the context of this approach, Roberts & Roussou’s (2003) formal approach to grammaticalization, which relies on the central idea that grammaticalization is always upward and leftward in the syntactic structure, is shown to makes some interesting and seemingly correct predictions.
Abstract
This paper takes questions regarding gradience and gradualness to be questions concerning the nature of grammatical categories. A notion of grammatical category is pursued which is not gradient, but rather more “traditional” in the sense that category membership is an instance of standard set membership. In order to deal with some of the empirical difficulties, both synchronic and diachronic, in consistently assigning category membership across all lexical formatives, a fine-grained and elaborate system of categories, following on from Cinque’s (1999) influential work on the clausal hierarchy, is adopted. In the context of this approach, Roberts & Roussou’s (2003) formal approach to grammaticalization, which relies on the central idea that grammaticalization is always upward and leftward in the syntactic structure, is shown to makes some interesting and seemingly correct predictions.
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
