WiSe 13/14: S-Language Change II: Grammaticalization
Ferdinand von Mengden
Comments
Since the 1980's there has been increasing attention to the way in which grammatical elements and grammatical structures may newly emerge and undergo change - an area in the study of language (change) which is commonly referred to as 'grammaticalization'. Nowadays quite a number of completely different phenomena on various levels of linguistic description (syntax, semantics, morphology, pragmatics, phonology) are analysed in this context and subsumed under the label 'grammaticalization'.
In this seminar, we will take a closer look at the different phenomena that are involved in the emergence and the change of grammatical elements and structures, thus analysing those areas of language change that predominantly affect the grammar of a language. We will see that, ultimately, even changes in the system or in syntactic structures do not take place in complete isolation from the traditional areas of interest such as sound change, lexical changes or language contact. We will employ the notion 'grammaticalization' in its widest possible sense, but we will also assess critically to what extent the various processes in question can reasonably be subsumed as one and the same phenomenon.
A useful handbook on the topic is:
Paul J. Hopper & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Second edition. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP. close16 Class schedule
Regular appointments