What makes Grammaticalization?

Download or read book What makes Grammaticalization? written by Walter Bisang and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2009-02-26 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The status of grammaticalization has been the subject of many controversial discussions. The contributions to What makes Grammaticalization? approach the prevalent phenomenon from the angle of language structure and focus on the interrelation between the levels of phonology, pragmatics (inference), discourse and the lexicon and some of them try to integrate the areal perspective. A wealth of data from Slavonic languages as well as from languages of other genetic and areal affiliation is discussed. The book is of interest to linguists specializing in grammaticalization, lexicalization and morphological typology, to language typologists as well as to functional, historical and cognitive linguists.