Journal of Pragmatics 38 (2006) 118–124

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Book review

Grammaticalization
Paul J. Hopper, Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, Cambridge
University Press, second ed., 2003 [1993], xx + 276 pp., paperback, ISBN 0-521-80421-3

Seeking to understand how and why grammatical categories arise, grammaticalization

has become in the past 20 years a focal point of interest in diachronic linguistics. As
originally conceptualized by Meillet (1958 [1912]), grammaticalization concerns the
development of lexemes into grammatical items, or ‘‘the increase of the range of a
morpheme advancing from a lexical to a grammatical form or from a less grammatical to a
more grammatical status’’ (Kurylowicz, 1965: 69); thus, typically, the development of
auxiliaries from complement-taking verbs, as in the case of English modals, or the
development of adpositions from relational nouns. Cross-linguistic evidence for the
regularities of the changes observed and the focus on discourse contexts for change has
brought grammaticalization studies beyond the realm of morphological and syntactic
change, at the core of a general theory of language change. This second edition of
Grammaticalization has been substantially revised to update the reader on the wealth of
research undertaken on the subject in the past 10 years, with focus on the diachronic
perspective. Debating both theoretical and methodological issues, the book is grounded on
a wide empirical net of case studies from a variety of unrelated languages — especially
English, Ewe, French, Hindi, Hittite, Japanese and Malay. Aimed at scholars and students
already having a general background in linguistics, a ‘must’ for research and courses in
grammaticalization and semantic change theory, Grammaticalization provides a
stimulating reading to anyone interested in historical linguistics, discourse analysis and
pragmatics.
Chapter 1 outlines some preliminary assumptions. Grammaticalization is defined as
both ‘‘that subset of linguistic changes whereby a lexical item or construction in certain
uses takes on grammatical characteristics, or through which a grammatical item becomes
more grammatical’’ (p. 2) and as ‘‘that part of the study of language change that is
concerned with such questions’’ (p. 1). The approach adopted highlights the non-
discreteness of many properties of language, such as the distinction between ‘‘content’’, or
‘‘lexical’’ words (referring to the relatively concrete meanings expressed by nouns, verbs
and adjectives), and ‘‘function’’, or ‘‘grammatical’’ words (referring to the relational
meanings expressed by determiners, auxiliaries, complementizers, etc.) (p. 4).

0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2004.12.010
 Book review 119

‘‘Grammatical’’ words are further aligned along a continuum of ‘‘bonding’’ that ranges
from items enjoying a relative phonological and morpho-syntactic independence, such as
prepositions in English, to dependent and bound forms, such as clitics and inflections (pp.
4–6). The notion of cline, as a natural ‘‘pathway’’ along which forms evolve, captures the
gradualness of the changes, whereby forms ‘‘do not shift abruptly from one category to
another, but go through a series of small transitions’’ (p. 6). Three case studies outline
different aspects of the grammaticalization cline from less to more grammatical, which is
argued to be a unidirectional one.
Chapter 2 provides a critical overview of past and current research work on
grammaticalization (cf. Traugott and Dasher, 2002: pp. 51–104 for a complementary
review of prior and current studies on semantic change), tracing the seeds of the reflection
on grammar and its evolution to its most recent trends. The section on earlier research
highlights interesting connections to the scientific paradigm of the time: from von
Humboldt’s and Gabelentz’s insights into the origins of grammar to Meillet’s
groundbreaking intuition of ‘grammaticalization’, used for the first time as ‘‘l’attribution
du caractère grammatical à un mot jadis autonome’’ (‘‘the attribution of grammatical
character to an erstwhile autonomous word’’, p. 19), as the main process whereby new
grammatical forms are constituted (p. 22).
Chapter 3 examines reanalysis and analogy as two fundamental mechanisms by which
grammaticalization takes place. Reanalysis, a ‘‘change in the structure of an expression
[. . .] that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface
manifestation’’ (Langacker, 1977: 58), concerns changes in interpretation, such as
syntactic rebracketing, as in the shift from purposive [I am going [to marry Bill]] to the
auxiliary [I [am going to] marry Bill]]: thus changes in constituency, category labels, or
type of boundary (Harris and Campbell, 1995: 61, 51). Analogy, on the other hand, refers to
the generalization of a structure and to the reorganization of paradigms that make the
unobservable changes of reanalysis observable (p. 64). The cyclical interaction of
reanalysis and analogy is illustrated by the development of negation in French (pp. 65–66),
where the reanalysis as a negative marker of the lexeme pas ‘step’ in the context of verbs of
movement (Il ne va pas: ‘He doesn’t go a step’) is extended analogically to new contexts
and verbs. Grammaticalization is best regarded as a subset of changes involved in
reanalysis: whereas grammaticalization necessarily involves reanalysis of category status
(decategorialization), many clear cases of reanalysis do not result in grammaticalization
(p. 59).
Chapter 4 focuses on possible ‘‘motivations’’, or ‘‘enabling factors’’ of language
change (p. 71). The hypothesis is that innovation and change occur primarily in the process
of strategic choice-making on the speaker’s part in interactional negotiation with the
hearer. The cognitive and communicative strategies motivating meaning changes are
argued to be crucial in the early stages of grammaticalization. These changes are initially
pragmatic and associative, arising in the context of the flow of speech, and in particular, in
the speaker’s attempt to be maximally informative, or expressive, which may lead to
pragmatic enrichment. The role of pragmatic inferencing in grammaticalization is
explored in relation to metaphorical and metonymic inferencing processes (for a fully
fledged model cf. the Invited Theory of Semantic Change Theory in Traugott and Dasher,
2002: pp. 34–40; cf. also ibid.: 27–34; 75–81). Such processes are seen to be
120 Book review

complementary and linked to the mechanisms discussed in Chapter 3: reanalysis

(metonymy) and analogy (metaphor).
Chapter 5 concentrates on ‘unidirectionality’, i.e. the hypothesis that the evolution of
grammatical structures involves the development of a lexical item or phrase through
discourse use into a grammatical item, and then into an even more grammatical item.
The first part of the Chapter redefines a set of issues related to unidirectionality, such as
generalization (pp. 101–106), decategorialization (pp. 106–115), specialization (pp. 116–
118), divergence (pp. 118–122) and renewal (pp. 122–124). While meaning changes
leading to narrowing of meaning will typically not occur in grammaticalization
(generalization), a form undergoing grammaticalization will tend to lose the morpho-
syntactic properties that identify it as a member of a major grammatical category such as
noun or verb (decategorialization). ‘Layering’, i.e. ‘‘the persistence of older forms and
meanings alongside new forms and meanings’’ (p. 124), is considered as a synchronic
result of unidirectionality; the role of frequency (viz. erosion of frequently used forms
and retention of irregular ones) is explored (pp. 127–130). The second part of the Chapter
reviews different views on unidirectionality, to conclude that the evidence for
unidirectionality is systematic and cross-linguistically replicated (pp. 130–139).
Chapters 6 and 7 discuss more extensively a set of well-known cases of
unidirectionality found in morphological and morpho-syntactic change. Chapter 6 looks
at clause-internal changes, focusing on ‘compacting’, i.e. the fusing of originally
independent items, such as clitics, into inflections (‘morphologization’). Several case-
studies are highlighted to illustrate that the beginnings of morphologization are to be
sought in the repeated use of specific syntactic constructions; relevance of meaning is also
shown to play a role in both fusion and morpheme order (pp. 151–154). Unidirectionality
towards a higher degree of bonding is also argued to apply in the development of complex
clauses, from relatively free juxtaposition through relatively loose adjoining to
embedding. Chapter 7 provides evidence of both the grammaticalization of clause
linkage markers and the development of complex sentence structures from juxtaposition
to morpho-syntactic bondedness.
Chapter 8 looks at the relevance of contact situations for both language change and
grammaticalization. Issues in creolization are shown to offer insights into the
conceptualization of how grammaticalization progresses across languages and time.
The purpose of the monograph is ‘‘to develop a synthesis of current thinking on
grammaticalization that will provide the basis on which further work can be built’’ (p. 38),
yet the book achieves much more, by relating grammaticalization to both (i) a general
picture of language change and (ii) different approaches to linguistic theory. The changes
involved in grammaticalization are scrutinized from their inception and motivations in
pragmatic factors (Ch. 4), through the morphosyntactic mechanisms by which they take
place (Ch. 3), to all correlated semantic and phonological modifications. Equal attention is
paid to the many fine-grained analyses of the linguistic data and to major theoretical issues,
such as the interaction of language acquisition and language change, the relationship
between changes in language use and changes in the system, and to the very definition of
language change, all questions being framed within a critical analysis of both the historical
background and the current paradigms in which they arise.
 Book review 121

One issue that, in my opinion, would require a more explicit treatment is that of the
correlation between grammaticalization and ‘‘coalescence’’, or ‘‘bondedness’’, especially
at the syntactic level. Grammaticalization clines of the type:

content item > grammatical word > clitic inf lectional > affix
are said to ‘‘generally involve a unidirectional progression in bondedness, that is, in the
degree of cohesion of adjacent forms that goes from loosest (‘periphrasis’) to tightest
(‘morphology’)’’ (p. 7). The disappearance of the boundary separating two morphemes is
not claimed to be a necessary correlate of grammaticalization: ‘‘The lexical items that
become grammaticalized [. . .] may eventually amalgamate morphologically, say, as stem
and affix’’ (p. 100).
A similar notion is transposed at the syntactic level: in Ch. 7, the authors show how
clause combining can be considered from the point of view of a unidirectional cline from
relatively free juxtaposition to syntactic and morphological bondedness (p. 176):
parataxis > hypotaxis > subordination ðp: 177Þ
These notions recall Lehmann’s categories of coalescence (increased bondedness at the
morphological level), fixation (loss of freedom, or variability, at the syntactic level) and
condensation (i.e. scope reduction) (cf. Lehmann, 1995) (pp. 31–32). Yet the correlation of
these parameters to grammaticalization has been challenged in a number of studies, leading
to the argument that: ‘‘grammaticalization should not be thought of as necessarily entailing
syntactic decrease in scope and bonding’’ (Traugott, 1995: 15), or that: ‘‘syntactic scope
increases must be allowed for in a theory of grammaticalization’’ (ibid.: 14; cf. also Tabor
and Traugott, 1998: 231).
Whereas other recent developments in the theory have been taken into account in the
monograph, this issue is not explicitly addressed. Why does grammaticalization sometimes
entail morphosyntactic bonding and condensation and sometimes not? Granted that
bonding cannot be taken as a definitory property of grammaticalization, is there a way to
predict when it will occur?
The question is spelled out in Visconti (2004). In her analysis of the evolution of the
Italian particles perfino and addirittura from spatial and temporal to scalar, she notices how
the subjectification process these particles undergo at the semantic level corresponds to a
gradual increase in mobility and capacity of combining with different constituents on the
syntactic level: from Old Italian (1), (2), to Present Day Italian (3), (4):

(1) Nel/meçço del castello è/una grande torre tutta/murata d’andanicho fino/et
perfino [al cielo]PP è/lunga la sua cima (Armannino, Fiorita, p. 1325 [TLIO]).
‘In the middle of the castle there’s a great tower . . . and its summit reaches
to the sky’.
(2) onde dice s. Agostino:/O Signore Dio, tu ci hai fatti a te, e però/inquieto è
lo cuore nostro perfino [che non si riposa/in te]CP (Cavalca, Esp. simbolo,
a.1342 [TLIO]).
‘O Lord . . . restless is our heart until it rests (not) in you’.
122 Book review

(3) le voleva bene, allora! Egli [la temeva]VP perfino (F. Tozzi, L’amore, 42 [LIZ]).
‘He loved her, then. He even feared her’.
(4) Era molto inquieta, e mi parve perfino [dimagrata]AdjP (F. Tozzi, Giovani,
61 [LIZ]).
‘She was very uncomfortable, and she even seemed to have lost weight’.

From the syntactic point of view, as shown by these data, perfino has shifted from VP-
internal position, sub-categorizing a PP (1) or a CP (2), to Specifier of all main constituents
(3), (4). The syntactic evolution of perfino is thus a case of reanalysis from preposition to
specifier, i.e. from a functional to a functional category, the reanalysis being triggered by
the semantic shift from spatial and temporal ‘‘until’’ to the additive scalar meaning ‘‘even’’.
The question is: Is the shift from preposition to scalar particle a case of
grammaticalization? Perfino appears to push the limits of grammaticalization beyond
the distinction between the change from lexical to functional category and the shift from
grammatical to more grammatical, as its evolution does not correspond to an increase in the
degree of grammatical interaction with contiguous elements in the clause that would be
distinctive of the second type of grammaticalization (cf. also Vincent, 1999: 1136). Scope
reduction and loss of freedom at the syntactic level are not manifested in either addirittura
nor perfino. On the contrary, like in the evolution of discourse markers, the shift from a
conceptual, spatial or temporal meaning to a more ‘pragmatic’ meaning, in which the
Speaker’s modalization is expressed, corresponds to the acquisition of a greater mobility
within the clause and to scope enlargement, as addirittura in (5) and (6):

(5) La situazione è allarmante. Addirittura, si parla di guerra.

‘The situation is alarming. Even, they’re talking about war’.
(6) A. Ho incontrato Mario.
B. Addirittura!
‘A. I met Mario
B. Really!’

In the light of these data, the issue of bonding and condensation can be thought of as an
aspect of the relationship between semantic change and grammaticalization. All items that
undergo grammaticalization but do not undergo scope reduction nor fixation are, to my
knowledge, cases of subjectification: losing the descriptive and referential aspects of their
meaning, and consequently their relational syntactic capacity (cf. Company, in press),
subjectified expressions will not manifest condensation nor fixation. To capture this
generalization, I argue, we need to further reflect on the second part of the definition of
grammaticalization, the shift from functional to functional category. Whereas the
unidirectionality of the shift from lexical to functional categories, or ‘‘primary
grammaticalization’’ (Traugott, 2002), is hardly subject to counterarguments, ‘‘secondary
grammaticalization’’ (Givón, 1991: 305), i.e. ‘‘the development of morphophonemic
‘texture’ associated with the category in question’’ (Traugott, 2002: 27), is still associated
to a move towards a higher degree of bonding of a certain functional category. Yet the
objection arises: if decategorialization, which is typically the shift from a ‘major’ to a
 Book review 123

‘minor’ category, does not apply to secondary grammaticalization and if bonding is not a
defining criterion, how can we decide whether a shift from functional to functional
category is a case of grammaticalization? The defining criteria for such cases still need to
be set out.
One suggestion comes from work concerned with the borderline between
grammaticalization and lexicalization. If prototypical examples of grammaticalization
involve bonding, to the point that Haspelmath (2004: 26) defines grammaticalization as ‘‘a
diachronic change by which parts of a construal schema come to have stronger internal
dependencies’’, yet coalescence is also typical of lexicalization. To avoid the conflation of
these processes frequently made in the literature (cf. Brinton and Traugott, in press: Ch. 3),
Himmelmann (in press) suggests context-expansion as the defining feature for
grammaticalization versus lexicalization: in particular, ‘‘host-class expansion’’, i.e. an
expansion in the class of elements with which the grammaticalizing item co-occurs (ibid.:
pp. 9–10). Together with an expansion in the syntactic environments and in the semantic-
pragmatic contexts in which the grammaticalizing element may be used, the compatibility
with more and more classes of items is argued to identify the specificity, and the
unidirectionality, of grammaticalization. This, I feel, highlights the direction in which to
work to pin down cases such as perfino and, more in general, the fascinating functional-to-
more-functional corner of the grammaticalization cline, — always framing the tension
between the relatively unconstrained lexical structure and the more constrained
morphosyntactic structure within the notion of the gradience of categories and patterns
in language.

References

Brinton, Laurel J., Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, in press. Lexicalization and Grammaticalization in Language
Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Company, Concepción, in press. Subjectification of verbs into discourse markers: semantic–pragmatic change
only? In: Nicole Delbecque, Bert Cornillie (Eds.), Modalization and Pragmaticalization. John Benjamins,
Amsterdam and Philadelphia.
Givón, Talmy, 1991. The evolution of dependent clause morpho-syntax in Biblical Hebrew. In: Elizabeth, Closs
Traugott, Heine, Bernd (Eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization, vol. II. John Benjamins, Amsterdam and
Philadelphia, pp. 257–310.
Harris, Alice C., Campbell, Lyle, 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistics Perspective. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Haspelmath, Martin, 2004. On the directionality in language change with particular reference to grammaticaliza-
tion. In: Olga, Fischer, Norde, Muriel, Perridon, Harry (Eds.), Up and Down the Cline: The Nature of
Grammaticalization. John Benjamins, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, pp. 17–44.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P., in press. Lexicalization and grammaticalization: opposite or orthogonal? In: Björn
Wiemer, Walter Bisang, Nikolaus Himmelmann (Eds.), What makes Grammaticalization — A Look from its
Components and its Fringes. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York.
Kurylowicz, Jerzy, 1965. The evolution of grammatical categories. Esquisses linguistiques II, 38–54, originally
published in Diogenes 1965: 55–71.
Langacker, Ronald W., 1977. Syntactic reanalysis. In: Charles, Li (Ed.), Mechanisms of Syntactic Change.
University of Texas Press, Austin, pp. 57–139.
Lehmann, Christian, 1995. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. Lincom Europa, Munich.
Meillet, Antoine, 1958 [1912]. Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Paris, Champion (Collection
Linguistique publiée par la Société de Linguistique de Paris 8).
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Tabor S Whitney, Traugott, Elizabeth C., 1998. Structural scope expansion and grammaticalization. In: Anna, G.
Ramat, Hopper, Paul J. (Eds.), The Limits of Grammaticalization. John Benjamins, Amsterdam and
Philadelphia, pp. 229–272.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, 1995. The role of the development of discourse markers in a theory of grammaticaliza-
tion. Paper presented at the XII ICHL, Manchester, 1995.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, 2002. From etymology to historical pragmatics. In: Donka, Minkova, Stockwell,
Robert (Eds.), Studying the History of English Language: Millenial Perspectives. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin,
pp. 19–49.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, Dasher, Richard B., 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Vincent, Nigel, 1999. The evolution of c-structure: prepositions and PPs from Indo-European to Romance.
Linguistics 37.6, 1111–1153.
Visconti, Jacqueline, 2004. On the origins of scalar particles in Italian. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 6/1.

Further reading

Letteratura Italiana Zanichelli. CD-ROM 4.0. Pasquale Stoppelli, Eugenio Picchi (Eds.). Zanichelli [LIZ].
Tesoro della Lingua Italiana. Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, C.N.R., Accademia della Crusca, Florence [TLIO].

Jacqueline Visconti is an Associate Professor at the University of Genoa. Her current interests include
grammaticalization and semantic change theory, with focus on the diachrony of scalar and conditional meanings.

Jacqueline Visconti
University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
E-mail address: [email protected]

1 December 2004