Grammaticalization

Abstract This article presents the study of grammaticalization within the fields of language change and variation, and historical linguistics. Grammaticalization has to do with the diachronic relationship between the lexicon and grammar and with stages of relatively greater and lesser grammaticality. The major effects of grammaticalization, e.g. phonological reduction, semantic generalization, and fusion (or bondedness) are reviewed. The various roles that reanalysis, analogy, and frequency play in grammaticalization are also discussed. The paper further presents the role that grammaticalization studies has played in establishing diachronic universals and discusses metaphor and metonymy in motivating those universals. Finally, the controversies concerning the exceptional status of grammaticalization, the unidirectionality hypothesis, and the legitimacy of grammaticalization as ‘process’ and ‘theory’ are addressed.