[Lingtyp] grammaticalized v grammaticized

[Christian Lehmann]

Just a brief comment on the thought-provoking comments by Alex and Daniel:

A distinction is to be made between a process and the state or property 
resulting from the process, like 'grammaticalize' and 'grammaticalized'. 
These are clearly different concepts. It is a defect of the English 
language that a passive participle predicate, as in /is 
grammaticalized/, is ambiguous between the process and its result. 
Likewise, abstract nouns like /grammaticalization/ often do not only 
designate a process, but also its result. It can clearly be useful to 
distinguish the two terminologically, like /grammaticalized/ (process) 
and /grammaticized/ (result), and likewise with /grammaticalization/ and 
/grammaticization/. This, however, has nothing to do with diachrony vs. 
synchrony.

A process may produce a result that remains in the system even after the 
process itself is no longer operative in the language. For instance, for 
some time there may be variation as to whether a certain syntactic 
construction is formed by rules of grammar or is lexicalized. If you 
look at the variation synchronically, you do not see its direction. 
However, once the result of the process, viz. the lexicalized 
expression, becomes part of the system while the syntactic construction 
gets lost, the system is changed. Looking at the phenomenon 
diachronically, including the phase of variation and the resultant 
phase, you do see the direction in the process. What differs is the 
viewpoint, viz. synchrony vs. diachrony. With it change the 
methodological possibilities and, consequently, the possible insights. 
The nature of the process itself remains unaffected; it is always 
lexicalization, a process of directed variation. The same goes for 
assimilation, metaphora and all the other examples of directed variation.

Christian

-- 

Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
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99092 Erfurt
Deutschland

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