Grammaticalization

Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics

by Paul J. Hopper, Elizabeth Closs Traugott

This is the first general introduction to grammaticalization, the processes whereby ordinary lexical items, such as nouns and verbs, change over time into grammatical elements such as case markers, sentence connectives and auxiliaries, and whereby grammatical elements in general come into being and decay. The authors synthesize work from several areas of linguistics, including historical linguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics. Data are drawn from many languages, including Ewe, Finnish, French, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, and especially English.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Nina]

This is one of the first linguistics books I've ever read, so I don't feel qualified to give it a star rating. It's definitely not for a beginner. I went through several sections without understanding what was going on. That being said I did get the gist of the argument and at 200 pages it certainly wasn't a waste of time even if you are new to the subject. Keep a dictionary or google handy while you read so you can look up obscure terms.

[Sarah Ext · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book aims to give a comprehensive account of grammaticalization. It serves as a great introduction to this linguistic notion. it also serves as a good textbook for whoever interested in linguistics. The term "grammaticalization" is thought to have originated with Meillet (1958, but first published in 1912). It has been utilized in different linguistics fields, such as: syntax, morphology, semantics and pragmatics.
Hopper and Traugott define grammaticalization as a process of linguistic change whereby an autonomous lexical unit gradually acquires the function of a dependent grammatical category. The grammaticalized word, then, continues to develop new grammatical functions. It is worth mentioning that forms do not shift abruptly from the lexical category to the grammatical one, but they go through a series of small transitions, transitions that tend to be similar in type across languages. This process is also accompanied by a gradual disappearance of segmental and suprasegmental phonological features. In addition, grammaticalization involves a loss of semantic content. It can also be analyzed from two different dimensions: synchronic & diachronic.
There are many other linguistic phenomena that have been tackled by the book. It's a must-read if you are considering becoming a linguistics major !

[Milo Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gives a dense buy very detailed introduction to grammaticalisation. The book does well to give the reader a foundation in the ideas of grammatical clines, the hypothesis of unidirectionality, and the factors that cause and define grammaticalisation. The book has a large amount of detailed case studies that give great examples of the phenomenon discussed in the book.

[André · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes this book has its lenghts, but this is perhaps because I read it with a specific interest and thus had to skip over some things and was a bit overwhelmed by the multitude of examples. However, it's really enlightening and informative. Grammaticalization is *the* process of language change, so this is quite an important topic. What I missed were the parameters which grammaticalization could be measured with. Christian Lehmann wrote about them in his book "Thoughts on Grammaticalization" in the eighties, but it seems Hopper & Traugott haven't taken over his views in their book (or maybe it was found in the 'History of Grammaticalization' chapter that I skipped!). I also compared this book with the first edition: a whole lot has been improved. All in all, I feel well-prepaired for my upcoming final exam in language change.

[Hans Henrik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Linguistics