20. Constructions in Grammaticalization.pdf

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20. Constructions in Grammaticalization

ELIZABETH CLOSS TRAUGOTT

Subject

Linguistics » Historical Linguistics

Key-Topics

grammar

DOI:

10.1111/b.9781405127479.2004.00022.x

A standard definition of grammaticalization is that it is the process whereby lexemes or lexical items

become grammatical. 1 Yet the equally standard examples of the process, such as body part terms becoming

adpositions (e.g., by (X's) side ), or motion verbs becoming auxiliaries (e.g., be going to > “future” gonna ),

typically involve not bare lexemes but morphosyntactic strings, or in most cases more properly

constructions. While the focus of most definitions of grammaticalization in the linguistic literature has been

on lexemes (and, in later stages, the grammaticalization of already grammatical items into more

grammatical ones, e.g., auxiliary verbs into affixes), increasing attention has recently been paid to the fact

that early in grammaticalization, lexemes grammaticalize only in certain highly specifiable morphosyntactic

contexts, and under specifiable pragmatic conditions. This concept of grammaticalization as a fundamentally

relational and context-dependent process has its origins in Meillet’ s work, and is therefore in no way new.

However, the research agendas of practitioners of grammaticalization theory have developed in rather

different ways depending in part on whether the focus is on lexemes or on the contexts in which they take

on grammatical functions. The present chapter explores some of the consequences of thinking about

grammaticalization when the starting-point is “the observation that grammatical morphemes develop

gradually out of … combinations of lexical morphemes with lexical or grammatical morphemes” (Bybee et al.

1994: 4), and when context is highlighted.

The concept of processes leading from words to affixes, and from concrete to more abstract meanings has

been widely discussed from the eighteenth century on (see Heine, this volume; Lehmann 1995: ch. 1; Heine

et al. 1991: ch. 1; Hopper and Traugott 1993: ch. 2), but the term “grammaticalization” seems to have

originated at the beginning of the twentieth century with Meillet. He defined it as: “le passage d'un mot

autonome au role d'élément grammatical … l'attribution du caractère grammatical à un mot jadis

autonome” 2 (Meillet 1912: 131). In the same article he also proposed that word order changes, such as

those from relatively free word order in Latin to more restricted word order in Romance languages, might be

cases of grammaticalization. Despite this insight, until recently most work on grammaticalization has

ignored the issue of word order, or specifically excluded it (e.g., Heine and Reh 1994), 3 and has focused

instead on the recruitment of lexemes into grammatical functions. For example, after citing Meillet’ s

definition above and Kurylowicz's similar formulation (1965), Lehmann says in an influential article: “[u]nder

the diachronic aspect, grammaticalization is a process which turns lexemes into grammatical formatives and

makes grammatical formatives still more grammatical” (1985: 303).

Earlier, however, in his pioneering 1982 working paper, Thoughts on Grammaticalization (published in

slightly revised form as a book in 1995), Lehmann had pointed out that in grammaticalization “[a] number of

semantic, syntactic and phonological processes interact in the grammaticalization of morphemes and of

whole constructions” (1995: viii). This position is significantly strengthened in general in Lehmann (1993)

and expressed eloquently elsewhere; consider, for example, the following statement: “grammaticalization

does not merely seize a word or morpheme … but the whole construction formed by the syntagmatic

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does not merely seize a word or morpheme … but the whole construction formed by the syntagmatic

relations of the element in question” (Lehmann 1992: 406). The attention to constructions is hardly

surprising given that Lehmann's prime examples are “verbal complexes” (specifically, the potential of main

verbs to develop into auxiliaries and ultimately affixes provided they are in some kind of construction with

other verbs, e.g., a serial verb construction), “nominal complexes” (the potential of relational nouns to

develop into case markers provided they are in adpositional relationships with another nominal), and clausal

relations such as subject-verb agreement (arising out of topic structures, and clearly also relational).

As the multiplicity of examples grew involving relationships between lexemes and grammaticalization, more

attention began to be paid on both sides of the Atlantic to the role of “phrases” or “constructions,” and

definitions of grammaticalization such as the following began to appear: “the process whereby lexemes and

constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions” (Hopper and Traugott

1993: xv) and “the evolution of grammatical form and meaning from lexical and phrasal antecedents”

(Pagliuca 1994: ix). In these definitions, “construction” is used in a pre-theoretical way, as it will be in the

rest of this chapter, though recent work in construction grammar (e.g., Goldberg 1995; Fillmore et al. 2003)

and models sympathetic to it (e.g., Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar), all designed for synchronic

purposes, have obvious relevance for the kind of approach proposed here. Although grammaticalization

typically results in morphosyntactic constructions, the combinations on which it operates are also

morphophonological. Morphophono-logical constructions are intonation units, including pitch and duration

contours (see, e.g., Zwicky 1982; Chafe 1994; Langacker 1994; the importance of intonation units in

incipient grammaticalization is highlighted in Givón 1991; Croft 1995; among others).

In thinking about a theory of grammaticalization it is essential to have a clear concept of “grammar” in mind,

for the most crucial point about grammaticalization is that it is a process whereby units are recruited “into

grammar.” Only the briefest statement is possible here. To contextualize the discussion that follows it must

suffice to mention that I see grammar as structuring communicative as well as cognitive aspects of language.

Grammar encompasses phonology, morphosyntax, and truth-functional semantics, and is rich enough to

license interaction with the general cognitive abilities such as are involved in the speaker-addressee

negotiation that gives rise to grammaticalization. These include information processing, discourse

management, and other abilities central to the linguistic pragmatics of focusing, topicalization, deixis, and

discourse coherence.

Grammaticalization phenomena are essentially gradient and variable. They proceed by minimal steps, not

abrupt leaps or parametric changes, though accumulated instances of grammaticalization might eventually in

some cases lead to these, or at least to some major category changes. A much-discussed example is the

development of syntactic auxiliaries in the history of English (for different analyses, see Lightfoot 1991;

Warner 1993; and references therein). Such small changes involve reanalysis of form-function pairs by

processes of abduction (Andersen 1973), often in ways so minimal as to challenge recent distinctions

between reanalysis and analogy (see especially Tabor 1994a, who argues from the framework of

connectionist grammar for “attractor” structures that constrain trajectories of change). Although children no

doubt play a part in language change, our written historical records give us no direct access to child

language acquisition. Furthermore, many examples of grammaticalization, including many discussed in this

chapter, seem likely to have been initiated by adults rather than children, because of the complex inferences

involved and the discourse functions in structuring text. As Slobin points out in discussing the discourse

origins of the present perfect in English: “children come to discover pragmatic extensions of grammatical

forms, but they do not innovate them; rather, these extensions are innovated diachronically by older

speakers, and children acquire them through a prolonged developmental process of conversational

inferencing” (Slobin 1994: 130). Therefore grammaticalization needs to be understood within a theory of

grammar that does not privilege parametric resettings or child language acquisition over other aspects of

language and acquisition of language.

The outline of the chapter is as follows. Section 1 introduces some widely held assumptions about structural

and semantic-pragmatic properties of grammaticalization, and how to account for them. In section 2

examples are discussed from the nominal and adverbial domains in the history of English, 4 in particular, the

recruitment of prepositional phrases or adverbs to serve other grammatical functions: locative in stead of

which acquired a new function as a substitutive connective, and the manner adverbials indeed, anyway ,

which acquired new functions as discourse markers. My purpose is to demonstrate how focus on

grammaticalization as centrally concerned with the development of lexemes in context-specific constructions

(not merely lexemes and constructions) potentially expands the boundaries of what is often considered

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(not merely lexemes and constructions) potentially expands the boundaries of what is often considered

grammaticalization. This will be achieved by pointing to the similarities between standard kinds of examples

and others which have been or might be excluded either because they violate certain assumptions about

structural unidirectionality in grammaticalization, or because the view of grammar espoused has not

envisaged the importance of studying interfaces with pragmatics. Implications of the data for the kinds of

theories outlined in section 1 are suggested in section 3.

1 Some Theories about Structural and Semantic-Pragmatic Properties of

Grammaticalization

1.1 Structural issues

The beginnings of recent work on grammaticalization, especially in the United States, are largely to be found

in explorations of (morpho)syntactic change (see, e.g., papers in Li 1977). A natural outcome was a focus on

structural issues. One of the key hypotheses was that of unidirectionality, conceptualized in terms of

structural simplification and optimization of grammars: “It would not be entirely inappropriate to regard

languages in their diachronic aspect as gigantic expression-compacting machines” (Langacker 1977: 106).

When Meillet introduced the term “grammaticalization” into the metalanguage of linguistics, and defined

grammaticalization in terms of shifts from lexical to grammatical item, he had already emphasized the

notion of structural unidirectionality. His definition cited above is unidirectional insofar as it suggests that

lexemes become grammatical, and that grammatical ones do not normally become lexical. 5 His tentative

suggestion that word order change from relatively free to more rigid order might be a kind of

grammaticalization was also a unidirectional statement.

The hypothesis of unidirectionality is intimately tied up with structural clines, which form the backbone of

work on grammaticalization, specifically a nominal cline:

(1) relational noun > secondary adposition > primary adposition > agglutinative case affix > fusional

case affix (Lehmann 1985: 304)

and a verbal cline, which has been formulated in various ways, such as:

(2) a. lexical verb > auxiliary > affix (Givón 1979: 220–2)

b. full verb > predicative construction > periphrastic form > agglutination (Ramat 1987: 8–12)

Table 20.1Correlation of grammaticalization parameters

Parameter

Weak grammaticalization

– Process

→ Strong grammaticalization

Integrity

Bundle of semantic features; possibly

polysyllabic

– Attrition

→Few semantic features;

oligo- or monosegmental

Paradigmaticity Item participates loosely in semantic

field

– Paradigmaticization→Small, tightly integrated

paradigm

Paradigmatic

variability

Free choice of items according to

communicative intentions

– Obligatorification →Choice systematically

constrained, use largely

obligatory

Structural

scope

Item relates to constituent of arbitrary

complexity

– Condensation →Item modifies word or stem

Bondedness Item is independently juxtaposed

– Coalescence →Item is affix or even

phonological feature of

carrier

Syntagmatic

variability

Item can be shifted around freely

– Fixation

→Item occupies fixed slot

Source: Lehmann (1982: 164), reproduced by permission of LINCOM EUROPA

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The clines are conceptualized in terms of coalescence or reduction of freer and segmentally fuller material

into more bonded, segmentally more restricted material; for example: “Once affixation has occurred, grams

do not ordinarily detach themselves and assume a free form again, so that growing dependence on

surrounding material is not usually reversed” (Bybee et al. 1994: 13).

Terminology such as “cline,” “coalescence,” “gradualness,” and “gradience” has tended to be misleading and

has suggested to some that the moment of grammaticalization of an individual item or construction is

meant on theoretical grounds to be unidentifiable. For example, in her very interesting article on the

emergence of grammars in creole contact situations, Bruyn (1996: 39) argues that such situations reveal

that, contrary to usual assumptions, “more or less instantaneous grammaticalization may take place.” The

terminology of clines and gradualness is meant to highlight the fact that the changes that are the subject of

grammaticalization studies are local and minimal, not primarily “cataclysmic” or “parametric” in the sense of

generative historical syntax (e.g., Lightfoot 1979, 1991). It is, however, incoherent to think of, for example,

the reanalysis of a lexical verb as an auxiliary as a literally gradual process. Reanalysis (innovation), however

small the steps by which it proceeds, is abrupt at each step (Hopper and Traugott 1993: 36). What is gradual

is the typically slow accretion of properties that lead up to the reanalysis. So is the gradual spread of an

innovation through the system (e.g., the spread of auxiliary status from one verb to another in specific

constructions), and, along a different dimension, through the community.

Working within a structuralist framework in which the main structural axes are paradigmatic (concerned with

structural choices in a certain position) and syntagmatic (concerned with structural constraints on sequences

and hierarchies of units), Lehmann (1982,1985) attempted to refine the concepts of cline and gradience. He

hypothesized that a complex set of “grammaticalization parameters” 6 all lead to grammaticalization scales in

which the earlier form is fuller, freer, and more complex than the later one. In a chart reproduced as table

20.1 , he identifies semantic and syntactic parameters. The lower, syntactic, half will be our only concern in

the present section.

The hypothesis of shift from fuller, freer, more complex structures to shorter, more bonded, simpler ones

(e.g., lexeme > affix) is an empirically testable one and has rightly been challenged (e.g., by Jeffers and

Zwicky 1980; Joseph and Janda 1988; Herring 1991; Nichols and Timberlake 1991; Ramat 1992; Harris and

Campbell 1995; Janda 1995, 2001). Many of the challenges relate to cliticization of former affixes and the

freeing up of former clitics. Examples of the latter are the decliticization of the Estonian emphatic clitic - p as

the relatively free particle ep (Campbell 1991) and of the Japanese clause-final concessive subordinator -ga

to a clause-initial adverb (Matsumoto 1988). Particularly open to challenge has been the hypothesis of

reduction in structural scope proposed by Lehmann. According to this hypothesis, grammaticalizing items

have scope over smaller and smaller grammatical units. If this hypothesis is correct, sentence adverbs should

become clause-internal adverbs, and complementizers (which have scope over clauses) should become

prepositions (which have scope over NPs). However, as we will see, this is not always (or even generally) the

case. I will propose that although the structural reductions, the condensations, coalescences, and fixations,

that Lehmann highlights are strong and viable tendencies in changes that lead to certain new form-function

relationships, such as case and tense-aspect-modality, they cannot be generalized to all domains of

grammatical function. They should not be used as gatekeepers to exclude from grammaticalization

morphosyntactic developments that are similar in other respects to case and temporal markers (see Tabor

and Traugott 1998).

1.2 Semantic-pragmatic issues

1.2.1 The discourse > syntax model

A different line of research within the domain of (morpho)syntactic change focused on what were considered

to be the discourse origins of grammaticalization. The foremost proponent of this theory was Givón, who

proposed the unidirectional cline:

(3) discourse > syntax > morphology > morphophonemics > zero (Givón 1979: 209)

Reminiscent of Meillet’ s (1912) suggestion that word order can shift from relatively free, discourse-

motivated word order to subject-predicate syntax, this model was designed to characterize such phenomena

as: topic clause > relative clause; finite clause > non-finite complementation; topic > subject; serial verbs >

case markers; lexical verb > auxiliary > tense-aspect-modality inflection. Probably more influential than any

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other statement about grammaticalization since Meillet’ s, this characterization brought together a number

of very different processes, and a number of different domains of language study. Givón was interested in

introducing pragmatics into the study of syntactic change and in exploring possible parallels between

language change and the observation that loose, largely independent (paratactic) configurations give way

over time to tighter, largely dependent (hypotactic) configurations in child language acquisition and the

development of creoles out of pidgins. These putative parallels have, however, proved largely illusory (see

Slobin 1994 on the lack of parallels between child language acquisition and language change, and Harris and

Campbell 1995: ch. 10 on problems with the hypothesis of parataxis > hypotaxis).

Proponents of the discourse > grammaticalization model in general appear to believe either that grammar

does not exist a priori and is always emerging (e.g., Hopper 1987) or that discourse is somehow chaotic and

structurally unconnected with grammar (e.g., Lehmann 1982).

The conceptual problem with the perspective proposed by the emergent grammar hypothesis is that, while it

is true that language systems are continually changing, nevertheless, local changes leading to

grammaticalization appear always to involve already extant structures and patterns that in use over time give

rise to new structures (at least for the items in question, if not for the grammar). These new structures

coexist with the older ones in a process that Hopper (1991) has called “layering.” Some of these new

structures may be more tightly bonded, but they are not always so. What is predictable, on a probabilistic

basis, is the new grammatical function, based on older pragmatic possibilities allowed by the already

available structure.

The conceptual problem with the perspective that grammatical phenomena that serve interface functions

with discourse are somehow “outside of” grammar is that the exemplars given typically entail structures that

have to be accounted for in contemporary grammatical theory, even the most “formal” kind, because they

occupy syntactic positions (an exception is the innovation of clausal dependency structures, which may be

limited to stable pidgins and early creoles only, since other known languages have syntactic dependency 7 ).

Consider, for example, the claim that with respect to the colloquial French expression:

(4) Jean, je l'ai vu hier

“John, I saw him yesterday”

one may say “that we are here at a level where syntax does not yet govern, where the discourse is structured

only by the rules of functional sentence perspective” (Lehmann 1995: 113). Lehmann is here discussing the

development of new word order patterns in French (for a detailed study, see Lambrecht 1981). However, any

formal syntax needs to account for the adjunct position occupied in (4) by Jean , given the presence of a

resumptive clitic pronoun l -, which is subject to a binding principle that is the syntactic correlate of

coreference. In other words, syntax does govern in (4) (and of course it governed prior to the development of

the new construction!). More significantly, an adjunct focus position, and an adjunct topic position

preceding it, have been argued by Hale (1987), Kiparsky (1995a), and others to go back to early Indo-

European.

1.2.2 The hypothesis of semantic and pragmatic weakening

A further unidirectional proposal concerning the semantic-pragmatic aspects of grammaticalization has been

that complex bundles of semantic features are reduced. This is characterized by Lehmann in the first

parameter of table 20.1 as “attrition” of semantic “integrity.” A slightly different formulation refers to loss of

semantic complexity: “linguistic units lose in semantic complexity [and] pragmatic significance” (Heine and

Reh 1984: 15). With regard to semantic properties of the form-function pairs involved in grammaticalization,

there is usually reduction in the particular semantic concrete referentialities of the lexeme involved, a

phenomenon known since Gabelentz's and Grimm's work in the nineteenth century as “bleaching” (German

verblassen ). There is also a change in the pragmatic characteristics of the pairs. However, as will be

discussed below, the hypotheses of reduction in semantic complexity and of pragmatic weakening are

deeply problematic.

The proposal that semantic complexity (as opposed to concrete semantic referentiality) reduces has been

challenged in the last few years by a highly productive research model: that of cognitive mappings from one

semantic domain to another (see especially Sweetser 1990), or of metaphorical transfer (e.g., Claudi and

Heine 1986; Heine et al. 1991; Heine, this volume: section 5, in which semantic and pragmatic paths of

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