The term grammaticalization is first introduced by the French Scholar Meillet in 1912; it is defined as a process whereby lexical items develop into grammatical items and items that are already grammaticalized assume new grammatical functions (cf.
Meilet 1912:131-133; Kurylowicz 1965: 52; Lehmann 1985:303; Heine, Claudi, and Hunnemeyer 1991:1-5; Hopper and Traugott 1993; Traugott and Konig 1991:189;
Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca 1994; 4-5). The issues related to grammaticalization have received considerable attention since the 1970s when researchers of different linguistic subfields were aware of the importance to understand the way that languages change. The study of grammaticalization involves various issues, mainly including the motivation of change, the nature of unidirectionality, the possible ways of changing.
It is a consensus that metaphor and metonymy contribute to the process of grammaticalization (Hopper an Traugott 1993:77-78). Metaphor is known as
“understanding and experiencing one kind of things in terms of another and directionality of transfer from a basic, usually concrete, meaning to one abstract”
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(Hopper and Traugott 1993: 77). In other words, a meaning of a certain expression is understood by mapping from the concrete source domain onto another one, the target domain; the two domains have similarities in conceptual domains. The similarity triggers association and initiates potential semantic change. In contrast, metonymy is characterized as a “referential strategy where a speaker refers to an entity by naming something associated with it” (Saeed 1997:78). That is, metonymy is semantic transfer through contiguity and indexes relations through co-occurring association (Attila 1989: 141:2; Hopper and Traugott 1993: 82). For example, Westminster is used as a metonym for the parliament of the United Kingdom. Metaphoric inferencing involves the mechanism of analogy whereas metonymic inferencing is associated with the mechanism of reanalysis. Scholars hold different views as to whether metonymy or metaphor plays the primary role in grammaticalization. Nevertheless, Hopper and Traugott recognize the importance of both mechanisms (1993):
[M]etonymic and metaphorical inferencing are complementary, but not mutually exclusive; process at the pragmatic level that results from the dual mechanism of reanalysis is linked with the cognitive process of metonymy, and analogy is linked with the cognitive process of metaphor. Being a widespread process, broad
cross-domain metaphorical analogizing is one of the contexts within which
grammaticalization operates, bit many actual instances of grammaticalization show that more local, syntagmatic and structure changing process of metonym
predominates in the early stages.
(Hopper and Traugott 1993:87)
The change of lexical words or grammatical items forms “a cline of
grammaticality ranging from free content words to bound grammatical morphemes”
(Hopper and Traugott 1993:7). Therefore, grammaticalization is viewed as a process by which items move toward the grammatical end of this cline (Hopper and
Thompson 1993: 94-129). The direction that an item moves along the cline is
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unidirectional; namely, the change of languages proceeds along a pathway that moves in one direction and cannot be reversed (Hopper and Traugott 1993:34). It is
suggested that “lexical material in highly constrained pragmatic and morphosyntactic context becomes grammatical, and already grammatical material becomes more grammatical” (Traugott 1995: 15). The principle of unidirectionality applies to every aspect; it can be observed in phonological, morphosyntactic, and semantic aspects. In terms of the morphosyntactic aspect, a form undergoing grammaticalization tends to lose its morphological and syntactic properties that characterize it as a prototypical member of a major grammatical category (Hopper and Traugott 1993:103). In the development of semantic change, a form experiences gradual semantic weakening or even loses its semantic content, a process called semantic bleaching (Heine 1993:89;
Matisoff 1991:384; Haiman 1994); concurring with the bleaching is a strengthening of the pragmatic meaning. Moreover, grammaticalization is accompanied with phonological erosion; the phonological substance is likely to be reduced or
attenuated when it has undergone grammaticalization. In this way, it can be known that linguistic change is multi-dimensional and proceeds in a non-reversible direction.
In addition to the linguistic aspects discussed above, speaker’s subjective attitudes could lead to semantic change. Regarding pragmatic-semantic perspective, the mechanism of subjectification in grammaticalization is defined as follows:
Grammaticalization usually involves subjectification. Subjectification is defined as a mechanism whereby “meanings tend to become increasingly based in the
speaker-writer’s subjunctive belief state or attitude toward what is said” (Traugott 2001a: 15). It is a gradient phenomenon, whereby forms and constructions that at first express primarily concrete, lexical, and objective meaning come through repeated use in local syntactic contexts to serve increasingly abstract, pragmatic, interpersonal, and speaker-based function.
(Traugott 1995:32)
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Subjectification is considered as a tendency in the principle of unidirectionality as well (Traugott 1982). A lexical form with ideational content is likely to evolve to a form with textually cohesive marking or finally to presuppositional expressive meanings. The order is as follow.
Propositional (textual) expressive (Traugott 1982:257)
The expressive meaning conforms to the idea of subjectification. Later, Traugott (1989) further revises the process of grammaticalization and proposes three tendencies in the path of grammaticalization.
Tendency I: Meanings based in external described situation > meanings based in the internal (evaluative/ perceptual/ cognitive) described situation.
Tendency II: Meaning based in the external or internal described situation> meanings based in the textual and metalinguistic situation.
Tendency III: Meanings tend to become increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective belief state/ attitude toward the proposition.
(Traugott 1989:34-35) The three tendencies demonstrate that the cline is unidirectional, from concrete to abstract, from propositional to metalinguistic, and from objective to subjective.