The pace of grammaticalization and the evolution of prepositional systems: Data from Romance
-
Benjamin Fagard
and
Alexandru Mardale
It is generally assumed that grammaticalization is a major process in linguistic change. It is also assumed that grammaticalization does not affect homogeneously all linguistic categories, or even all languages: it has been said, for instance, that some languages are further down most grammaticalization clines than others and, thus, appear to be more grammaticalized than others. In this paper, we illustrate the uneven pace of grammaticalization in Romance by analysing a specific area of language, viz. simple and complex prepositions. Our goal is to establish a list of prepositions which are in actual use in five present-day Romance languages (to wit, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish). In order to do so, we check the validity of existing lists against written and spoken corpora, and evaluate the degree of grammaticalization of each morpheme or construction, on the basis of (mainly) morpho-syntactic criteria. Additionally, and most importantly, a corpus-based approach makes it possible to observe these items’ frequency. The result offers a clear picture of the degree of grammaticalization of prepositions in present-day Romance, showing that French seems indeed to be the most grammaticalized Romance language, followed by Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.
© 2012 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction: The pace of grammaticalization in a typological perspective
- The pace of grammaticalization and the evolution of prepositional systems: Data from Romance
- Grammaticalisation and the internal logic of the indefinite article
- Grammaticalization and innovation in the encoding of motion events
- Word order in French, Spanish and Italian:A grammaticalization account
- Degrees of grammaticalization in three Romance languages: A comparative analysis of existential constructions
- The evolution of negation in French and Italian: Similarities and differences
- Gradualness and pace in grammaticalization: The case of adversative connectives
- Stages of grammaticalization of causative verbs and constructions in Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian
- A comparative study of word order in Old Romance
- Possessives and grammaticalization in Romance
- Acknowledgements
- Conference report
- Index to volume 46
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction: The pace of grammaticalization in a typological perspective
- The pace of grammaticalization and the evolution of prepositional systems: Data from Romance
- Grammaticalisation and the internal logic of the indefinite article
- Grammaticalization and innovation in the encoding of motion events
- Word order in French, Spanish and Italian:A grammaticalization account
- Degrees of grammaticalization in three Romance languages: A comparative analysis of existential constructions
- The evolution of negation in French and Italian: Similarities and differences
- Gradualness and pace in grammaticalization: The case of adversative connectives
- Stages of grammaticalization of causative verbs and constructions in Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian
- A comparative study of word order in Old Romance
- Possessives and grammaticalization in Romance
- Acknowledgements
- Conference report
- Index to volume 46
