Download PDF by Kim Frintrop: Is Grammaticalization Unidirectional?

Seminar paper from the yr 2014 within the topic English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature experiences, grade: 1,7, Johannes Gutenberg college Mainz, path: Seminar English Linguistics, language: English, summary: Grammaticalization is a well-attested means of language switch and provides a fancy sub-field of linguistics. even supposing grammaticalization is assumed to be a slightly younger region of linguistics, its background is as outdated because the background of linguistics (cf. Narrog & Heine 2011: 1). The time period ‘grammaticalization’ itself was once it seems that first coined by means of the French linguist Meillet, a pioneer within the box of grammaticalization. In his paintings L’évolution des formes grammaticales (1912), Meillet describes the method of grammaticalization as “Le passage d’un mot autonome au rôle d’élément grammatical” (1912: 131 mentioned in Ferraresi 2014: 1) indicating a metamorphosis of an erstwhile independent signal right into a grammatical aspect. a newer definition of grammaticalization is given through Hopper and Traugott who outline it as “the procedure wherein lexical goods and buildings are available in convinced linguistic contexts to serve grammatical features, and, as soon as grammaticalized, proceed to enhance new grammatical capabilities” (2008: xv).
Although the sector of grammaticalization is already extensively explored, its experiences stay fascinating considering the fact that a number of of them were the topic of severe discussions. essentially the most attention-grabbing and tough hypotheses in grammaticalization experiences is gifted by way of the unidirectionality speculation: “the declare that adjustments that fall into the class of grammaticalization consistently movement into the course – from extra to much less lexical or from much less grammatical to extra grammatical” (Börjars & Vincent 2011: 163).
However, is it impossible for a grammatical merchandise to develop into much less grammatical or perhaps lexical? at the foundation of Norde’s fresh research on degrammaticalization (2009; 2012), the paper will take a more in-depth glance no matter if the unidirectionality speculation is completely actual or no longer.
The following paper is established as follows: part offers a short evaluate of critical options and definitions concerned with grammaticalization and at last it offers Lehmann’s parameters of grammaticalization (1995). In part 3, the paper includes a crucial method on how the unidirectionality speculation might be defined. part 4 offers legitimate counterexamples of the unidirectionality speculation with appreciate to Lehmann’s parameters (1995). To finish, the paper summarizes the most results.