16.2240, Review: Historical Ling/Morphology: Wiemer et al. (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2240. Fri Jul 22 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2240, Review: Historical Ling/Morphology: Wiemer et al. (2004)

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1)
Date: 22-Jul-2005
From: Margaret Dunham < madunham at club-internet.fr >
Subject: What makes Grammaticalization? 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:01:30
From: Margaret Dunham < madunham at club-internet.fr >
Subject: What makes Grammaticalization? 
 

EDITORS: Wiemer, Björn; Bisang, Walter; Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 
TITLE: What makes Grammaticalization? 
SUBTITLE: A Look from its Fringes and its Components
SERIES: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 158
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1003.html


Margaret D. Dunham, Laboratoire de Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale,
CNRS, Villejuif, France

This 354 page book is a collection of 11 papers on diverse aspects of 
grammaticalization. It is divided into 4 parts: General issues; On 
building grammar from below and from above: Between phonology and 
pragmatics; Grammatical derivation; and The role of lexical semantics and 
of constructions. The book ends with a subject index, an author index and 
a language index.

The first paper, "What makes grammaticalization? An appraisal of its 
components and its fringes", by Björn Wiemer and Walter Bisang, is an 
excellent introduction to the book as a whole, separately presenting the 
different concepts treated in the book, while noting how each author's 
contribution fits in.

The paper begins with a short history of studies in grammaticalization. It 
then goes on to present the main purpose of the book, which is to look at 
grammaticalization from a broader perspective than as defined by such 
authors as Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer (1991), Hopper and Traugott (1993) 
Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca (1994) and Lehmann ([1982] 1995). This broader 
perspective considers grammaticalization not only as the study of changes 
along a "cline", from morphosyntactically more complex to more reduced 
expression formats, but takes into consideration the "fringe areas": 
pragmatics, phonology and the lexicon. 

The paper ends with an explanation of what led to the book's existence: a 
workshop on the difference between grammaticalization and lexicalization, 
organized by Björn Wiemer in Constance, Germany, from the 1st to the 3rd 
of February, 2001. The main outcome of the workshop was the recognition of 
the need to take into consideration the distributional properties of 
linguistic units and the interaction between stems and diverse functional 
morphemes. 

The second paper, "Lexicalization and grammaticization: Opposite or 
orthogonal?" by Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, undertakes to define the criteria 
necessary for distinguishing between lexicalization and grammaticization. 
He starts out by giving the most commonly encountered definitions for 
lexicalization and grammaticization, which usually appeal either to 
the "box" metaphor or to the "process" metaphor. 

The box metaphor is roughly described as the idea that the lexicon and the 
grammar are two large boxes, and lexicalization and grammaticization 
concern elements that move from one box to the other. 

Following the process metaphor, lexicalization is most often used to refer 
to cases of univerbation and fossilization. The first is where two or more 
lexical items frequently occurring together become one item, as 
for 'cupboard', or 'brainstorming', and the second is where 
morphologically complex forms become unanalyzable wholes. Grammaticization 
usually refers to a lexical item which develops into a grammatical item, 
such as the word for 'go' which has become a future marker, or when a 
grammatical item becomes a more grammatical item, the author giving the 
example of a directional marker which becomes a dative marker and later on 
an accusative marker. 

The author maintains that it is crucial to not only focus on the 
grammaticizing element, because it is the grammaticizing element in its 
syntagmatic context which is grammaticized, and thus it is constructions 
and not individual lexical items which are the proper domain of 
grammaticization.

The author concludes that the essential difference between lexicalization 
and grammaticization is that in the first case, it is a string of items 
which is conventionalized, whereas in the latter case, the process of 
conventionalization concerns a construction, containing at least one fixed 
item, the grammaticizing element, and a growing class of items which enter 
into the construction.

The third paper, "Exploring grammaticalization from below", by Livio 
Gaeta, opens Part II of the book, "On building grammar from below and from 
above: Between phonology and pragmatics". The author questions the 
assumption that there is a diachronic tendency towards building up 
grammar, but asserts that grammaticalization theory is helpful for 
demonstrating that grammar is not merely an aggregate of fortuitous 
changes, but that the changes are well motivated, and dependant on the way 
language users perceive the world around them. 

The first part of his paper discusses the reanalysis of phonological 
structures and rules, and disputes the claim that phonological items 
having grammatical significance (such as German umlauting, for example) 
belong to the lowly domain of "morphologization" rather than the more 
important domain of "grammaticalization". The author gives several 
examples of the reanalysis of phonological rules, taken from various 
languages such as several Italian dialects, Breton and German. 

In the second part of his paper, the author asserts the central role of 
morphology, and argues for a morphocentric view of grammaticalization, 
stating that language change is often of a centripetal nature, and not of 
a unidirectional nature. 

The fourth paper, "Grammaticalization vs. pragmaticalization? The 
development of pragmatic markers in German and Italian", by Susanne 
Günthner and Katrin Mutz, studies function words connecting larger parts 
of spontaneous discourse in German and Italian from a pragmatic 
perspective. These function words, the subjunctors 'wobei' and 'obwohl' in 
German, and modifying suffixes in Italian, have developed discourse-
pragmatic functions where their functional scope has extended from the 
morphological and sentence-syntactical level to the level of discourse and 
speech act. Through the analysis of examples taken from historical sources 
as well as from present-day spontaneous speech, the authors argue that the 
emergence of discourse-pragmatic functions in suffixes, adverbs, 
conjunctions, etc. demonstrate that narrow concepts of grammaticalization, 
based on morphosyntactic criteria, are not sufficient for explaining 
processes involved in the development of pragmatic markers, and that an 
extended model of grammaticalization is necessary, which takes into 
account changes in function on the discourse-pragmatic level. In their 
view, it is necessary to distinguish between the different kinds of 
changes leading to grammaticalization, namely morphologization, 
syntacticization and pragmaticization.

In the fifth paper, "Grammaticalization without coevolution of form and 
meaning: The case of tense-aspect-modality in East and mainland Southeast 
Asia", Walter Bisang shows how two salient typological properties of these 
languages: lack of obligatory grammatical categories and comparatively 
weak correlation between the lexicon and morphosyntax, lead to pragmatics 
being more than usually relevant; the nonexistence of morphological 
paradigms; and the nonconvergent development of form and meaning. This 
latter characteristic is important for explaining the wide diffusion of 
grammaticalization processes in the grammars of East and mainland 
Southeast Asian languages. The author illustrates these traits using the 
verb 'come to have' in Khmer and Hmong, and verb-final '-le' and sentence-
final 'le' in Chinese. 

The sixth paper, "The rise of an indefinite article: The case of 
Macedonian 'eden'", by Daniel Weiss, examines the current use 
of 'eden' "one" in contemporary standard Macedonian, where it can be used 
not only as a numeral but also as an indefinite pronoun, possibly being 
grammaticalized into an indefinite article. 

The author explores several possible grammaticalization channels 
for 'eden': the quasi-universal tendency whereby indefinite articles 
originate in indefinite pronouns, which in their turn may usually be 
traced back to the numeral 'one'. The second grammaticalization channel 
concerns the impact of discourse structure on the acceptability and 
optionality of 'eden'. The third possibility concerns the degree of 
definiteness and of topicality. The fourth possibility concerns the 
expansion of the distinctive function, where 'eden' serves as a sort of 
intensifier, and can be combined with abstract as well as concrete nouns. 
The fifth and final grammaticalization channel mentioned is when the role 
of referential status is reanalyzed, where the element begins by referring 
to a quantity, and goes on to mark genericity. The author concludes that 
the distinctive function of 'eden' is to single out, render more 
distinguishable, one referent from a set of similar referents, a function 
which is more pronounced in predicative and non-specific uses than in 
specific and generic reference. 

Part III, "Grammatical derivation", begins with the seventh 
paper, "Grammaticalization via extending derivation", by Volkmar Lehmann. 
The author points out that processes in grammaticalization can comprise a 
mere alteration in distribution and functions, a change from lexical to 
grammatical status without any change in external form. To illustrate this 
point, he takes the case of the development of aspect in Slavonic. He 
begins by tackling the problem of the characterization of the grammatical 
nature of Russian aspect, and Slavonic aspect generally, namely whether it 
should be considered an inflectional or a derivational phenomenon. The 
author argues that it is possible to account for these cases in the same 
manner as Walter Bisang for East and mainland Southeast Asian languages, 
which is by considering them as functions which are highly inferential in 
character, which show no changes in formal substance, but which show full 
distributional expansion, and thus constitute an argument in favor of 
functionally based grammaticalization 

The eighth paper, "Grammaticalization the derivational way: The Russian 
aspectual prefixes 'po-', 'za-', 'ot-'" by Katherina Böttger, describes a 
small part of the process of the development of Russian aspect, namely the 
development of the three prefixes noted in the title. Building on the 
previous paper by V. Lehmann, the author describes how these prefixes 
expanded in interaction with the lexical-actional function of the verb 
stems first as lexical prefixes and, later, also as aspectual, and 
therefore grammatical, prefixes. She further describes how these prefixes 
went through several stages in their development: firstly fulfilling only 
a spatial function, then also fulfilling an aspectual function, and 
thirdly also partly fulfilling a temporal function. 

The ninth paper, "The role of predicate meaning in the development of 
reflexivity" by Ekkehard König and Letizia Vezzosi, explores the ways in 
which the compatibility between the reflexive marker and a growing number 
of verbs shaped the evolution of the reflexive marker in English and other 
languages. They begin by exploring the restrictions which exist on the 
applicability of the reflexive marker to different semantic categories of 
verbs, namely "other-directed" and "non-other-directed" predicates. They 
then show that grammaticalization happens in specific constructions, in 
certain onset contexts, under certain conditions. They identify certain 
contexts where the need for disambiguation led to the development of 
complex reflexive anaphors in English, where they are the result of a 
fusion between personal pronouns and intensifiers. Addressing the question 
of why such changes happen in some languages but not in others, they 
hypothesize that in the case of English, contact with Celtic languages may 
have facilitated the evolution. 

The tenth paper, "Modals and the boundaries of grammaticalization: the 
case of Russian, Polish and Serbian-Croation" by Björn Hansen, describes 
modals in Slavonic languages and attempts to account for their development 
following the parameters of grammaticalization established by Lehmann. The 
author determines modals by locating them on a grammaticalization chain, 
extending from content words to fully-fledged modal auxiliaries. He posits 
that modals can be divided into several categories, depending on their 
semantic and formal properties, ranging from central to peripheral. 
According to Hansen, Slavonic modals show a medium degree of 
grammaticalization: they retain their status of more or less autonomous 
units and do not coalesce with the main verb, and show no specific 
morphological or syntactic properties, which leads him to state that, 
contrary to the modals in many Germanic languages, the grammaticalization 
of Slavonic modals came to a relatively early halt. 

In the final article, "The evolution of passives as grammatical 
constructions in Northern Slavic and Baltic languages", Björn Wiemer shows 
that the comparison between Northern Slavic and Baltic languages is useful 
for observing different stages in grammaticalization, as, even though they 
share a large amount of morphosyntactic techniques and markers, the 
central factors that determine the grammatical status of these properties 
lies in the way they fit into passive constructions. 

The author notes that the usual grammaticalization parameters are 
inadequate for describing the development of passives in these languages, 
as passives are constructions, and as such, cannot be described in terms 
of morphologization. Furthermore, passives are particular in that they are 
never obligatory, speakers can always chose to use an active construction. 
Wiemer concludes with a number of criteria that could be used to account 
for the degree of grammaticality of passives, instead of those from 
morpheme based grammaticalization theory 

CRITICAL EVALUATION

The high level of expertise in the various domains covered by the papers 
in this book make it an important contribution to the field of 
grammaticalization studies. An unfortunate hurdle to the understanding of 
many of the papers is the poor level of English. Faulty grammar and a lack 
of punctuation make it necessary to re-read some of the sentences many 
times. However, it is possible to look upon some of the more interesting 
formulations as contributions to the study of contact-induced 
grammaticalization. 

In my opinion, the major contribution of this volume to grammaticalization 
theory lies in its search for ways in which to integrate problematic 
elements such as constructions and expression formats, as well as in its 
efforts to establish what does or does not belong to the domain of the 
theory. The result is a clearer notion of how to broaden the theory, 
making it possible to take into account all the processes involved in 
diachronic grammatical change and the emergence of grammatical systems.

REFERENCES

Bybee, Joan L., Revere Perkins, and William Pagliuca. 1994. The Evolution 
of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. 
Chicago-London: Chicago University Press.

Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi, and Friederike Hünnemeyer. 1991. 
Grammaticalization: A Conceptual Framework. Chicago-London: University of 
Chicago Press.

Hopper, Paul J., and Elisabeth C. Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Lehmann, Christian. 1995. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. (LINCOM Studies 
in Theoretical Linguistics 1.) Munich-Newcastle: Lincom Europa. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Margaret Dunham carries out research in linguistics at the French National 
Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Her doctorate consisted in a 
monograph on Langi, a hitherto undocumented Bantu language spoken in 
Tanzania. She is currently documenting a closely related language, 
Nyilamba, in order to clarify certain areal typological features, 
certainly due in part to long contact with surrounding Cushitic languages.





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