Table Of ContentGrammaticalization
Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS)
This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical
Studies in Language.
Editors
Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen
University of Vienna Arizona State University
Editorial Board
Bernard Comrie Christian Lehmann
Max Planck Institute, Leipzig University of Erfurt
and University of California, Santa Barbara
Brian MacWhinney
William Croft Carnegie-Mellon University
University of New Mexico
Marianne Mithun
Östen Dahl University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Stockholm
Heiko Narrog
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal Tohuku University
University of Cologne
Johanna L. Wood
Ekkehard König University of Aarhus
Free University of Berlin
Volume 119
Grammaticalization. Current views and issues
Edited by Katerina Stathi, Elke Gehweiler and Ekkehard König
Grammaticalization
Current views and issues
Edited by
Katerina Stathi
Elke Gehweiler
Ekkehard König
Free University Berlin
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grammaticalization : current views and issues / edited by Katerina Stathi, Elke Gehweiler,
Ekkehard König.
p. cm. (Studies in Language Companion Series, issn 0165-7763 ; v. 119)
“The present volume grew out of the symposium “What’s new in grammaticalization?”,
which was held at the Freie Unversität Berlin, May 11-12, 2007.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Grammaticalization. 2. English language--
Grammaticalization. 3. English language--Discourse analysis. I. Stathi, Katerina.
II. Gehweiler, Elke. III. König, Ekkehard.
P299.G73.G7225 2010
415--dc22 2010016881
isbn 978 90 272 0586 5 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8800 4 (Eb)
© 2010 – John Benjamins B.V.
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Table of contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
Katerina Stathi, Elke Gehweiler & Ekkehard König
part i. Basic questions
On some problem areas in grammaticalization studies 17
Gabriele Diewald
Issues in constructional approaches to grammaticalization in English 5 1
Graeme Trousdale
Reconsidering erosion in grammaticalization: Evidence from cliticization 7 3
René Schiering
Grammaticalization, subjectification and objectification 101
Svenja Kranich
Degrammaticalization: Three common controversies 123
Muriel Norde
Degrammaticalization and obsolescent morphology: Evidence from Slavonic 151
David Willis
part ii. Grammaticalization and the explanation of language change
An analogical approach to grammaticalization 181
Olga Fischer
Does grammaticalisation need analogy? Different pathways
on the ‘pronoun/agreement marker’-cline 221
Gunther De Vogelaer
Grammaticalization
What grammaticalisation can reveal about same-subject control 241
Debra Ziegeler
How the Latin neuter pronominal forms became markers
of non-individuation in Spanish 273
Elisabeth Stark & Natascha Pomino
part iii. Case studies of micro-processes of grammaticalization
The Grammaticalization of the German adjectives lauter (and eitel) 297
Elke Gehweiler
Is German gehören an auxiliary? The grammaticalization
of the construction gehören + participle II 323
Katerina Stathi
Micro-processes of grammaticalization: The case of Italian l’un l’altro 343
Letizia Vezzosi
List of contributors 373
Index 375
Preface
The present volume grew out of the symposium ‘What’s new in grammaticalization?’,
which was held at the Freie Unversität Berlin, May 11–12, 2007 and which was orga-
nized by Ekkehard König, Elke Gehweiler and Katerina Stathi. This event completed
the work of the research group in the project ‘On the role of performance, of syntag-
matic and paradigmatic relations in the genesis, development, and renewal of gram-
mar’ led by Professor Ekkehard König during the years 2005–2007. The purpose of
the symposium was the discussion of on-going research on theoretical issues on
grammaticalization as well as the presentation of new empirical data.
We are grateful to the Collaborative Research Center (SFB 447) Kulturen des
Performativen and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Max Planck Society, Max Planck
Prize for International Cooperation awarded to Ekkehard König in November 2002)
for financial support.
We are especially indebted to those colleagues who reviewed the papers for us.
Moreover, we wish to thank Martin Haspelmath for discussion on several issues and
previous versions of the introduction to the volume. We would also like to thank the
editors of the Studies in Language Companion Series, Werner Abraham and Elly van
Gelderen, for including our volume into their series as well as for helpful comments
on the introduction and the content of the volume.
Last but not least, we wish to thank Kees Vaes and Martine van Marsbergen from
John Benjamins for the professional supervision of the project and their excellent work.
Introduction
Katerina Stathi, Elke Gehweiler & Ekkehard König
Freie Universität Berlin
1. Preliminary remarks
The present volume grew out of the symposium “What’s new in grammaticaliza-
tion?”, which was held at the Freie Unversität Berlin, May 11–12, 2007. It contains a
subset of the presentations given at the symposium. Our aim was to achieve a bal-
anced selection of both theoretical and empirical studies. The contribution of this
volume to the field is located in three areas, which are also reflected by the structure
of the book.
The first part contains contributions to old and recent issues in grammaticaliza-
tion from a broad perspective. The papers in this part of the book shed light on cen-
tral issues in grammaticalization research, such the concept of “grammar” as the
endpoint of grammaticalization processes, erosion in grammaticalization, and the
(uni)directionality debate. Others contribute to more recent discussions such as the
relation between grammaticalization and constructions and the notion of subjectifi-
cation. The second part of the book is devoted to studies that critically review the role
of grammaticalization in the explanation of language change, in addition and con-
trast to other processes such as analogy and exaptation. These papers also focus on
the tension and/or synthesis between formal and functional approaches to gram-
maticalization and language change in general. Finally, the third part of the volume
includes case studies which focus on micro-processes of grammaticalization and
provide new empirical facts.
Empirical evidence for (and against) grammaticalization comes from such di-
verse grammatical domains as subject control, clitics, reciprocal markers, pronouns
and agreement markers, gender markers, auxiliaries, aspectual categories, intensify-
ing adjectives and determiners, and pragmatic markers. The languages covered in-
clude English and its varieties, Standard German, Italian, Spanish, dialects of Dutch,
German and Romance (French and Italian), Slavonic languages, and Turkish.
Katerina Stathi, Elke Gehweiler & Ekkehard König
2. Part I: Basic questions
The papers in the first part of this volume deal with different questions that have
figured prominently in functional approaches to grammaticalization. The following
topics are addressed: the notion of grammar in grammaticalization research, con-
structional issues in grammaticalization, subjectification, and the directionality of
grammaticalization and degrammaticalization. Furthermore, one of Lehmann’s
(2002 [1995]) parameters, erosion, is dealt with in more detail.
One important issue concerns the notion of grammar as the endpoint of gram-
maticalization processes. The question “What is grammar?” is rarely addressed ex-
plicitly in grammaticalization research. A well-known proposal to define the end-
point of grammaticalization is offered by Lehmann’s (2002 [1995]) parameters, which
are intended to capture the essence of grammar as a result of the relevant changes. In
functionalist approaches to grammaticalization, “grammatical” is conceived of as a
continuum, as is also reflected in the grammaticalization cline: content item > gram-
matical word > clitic > inflectional affix, where only the final stage manifests all of the
characteristic properties of grammatical markers. This implies that not only can a
lexical item become a grammatical item but that a grammatical item can become
more grammatical (cf. Hopper & Traugott 2003, Brinton & Traugott 2005). On the
other hand, in the generative tradition grammaticalization is seen as a change which
involves the creation of new exponents of functional categories from lexical catego-
ries. Grammaticalization results from reanalysis and involves parameter change
(Roberts & Roussou 2003, Roberts 2007). A slightly different view is held by van
Gelderen, who argues that grammaticalization is based on Economy Principles. In
her view changes result in a simpler and therefore more economical grammar
(van Gelderen 2004, van Gelderen 2008; cf. also Faarlund (2008)).
In her paper “On some problem areas in grammaticalization studies” Gabriele
Diewald discusses three areas of grammaticalization which remain problematic be-
cause the central concepts – the notions of “grammar” and “grammatical” – are not
defined by substantive criteria. She proposes a definition of “grammar” suitable for
grammaticalization research that is deictic in nature. Her central claim is that gram-
matical signs have an indexical potential, i.e. they include a “pointing relation” as
part of their meaning, which “points” from a source position to a target position. This
indexical relation of grammatical signs reveals the pragmatic foundation of gram-
mar. Aspects of grammatical meaning are defined by three weakly deictic types of
relational structure. First, a linguistic sign may point back to the origo (i.e. to the zero
point of the utterance) thus enabling the recipient to retrieve the origo and the type
of connection between the linguistic utterance and the communicative situation
(e.g. tense or mood). Second, a linguistic sign may point to some entity in the linguis-
tic syntagm and establishes syntagmatic relations on the linguistic level (e.g. textual
meanings and functions such as anaphoric, connective, valency relations). Third, in
the paradigmatic relational meaning, the linguistic sign points to the unmarked
