Читать книгу Multiple Preverbs in Ancient Indo-European Languages - Chiara Zanchi - Страница 20

At least since the early 19^th century, it has been a common observation that independent lexical items constitute the ultimate source for bound grammatical forms (e.g. Bopp 1816; Humboldt 1822; Wüllner 1831).1 However, Antoine Meillet was the one who presumably coined the term “grammaticalization”, which increasingly acquired more generally accepted usage in later research. Meillet (1912) described grammaticalization as the development of an autonomous word into a grammatical element, that is, as a linguistic change whereby lexical items enter the grammatical system.2 Meillet (1912: 140–141) later on compared the process of grammaticalization to a spiral: first, languages add non-obligatory elements to a given expression for the sake of intensification; then, these elements increasingly undergo semantic bleaching (i.e. they lose or reduce their meaning), lose their autonomy, and eventually enter the grammatical system. Further new expressive elements thereafter come into play and in turn undergo bleaching in a neverending cycle.3 Crucially for later research (cf. Section 2.2.3), Meillet assigned gradualness to grammaticalization: focusing on the French verb ‘to be’, he individuated different stages within its path from a lexical locative-existential verb (je suis chez moi ‘I am home’), through a copula (je suis malade ‘I am sick’), into a tense auxiliary (je suis allé ‘I went’).

Building on Meillet’s ideas, Kuryłowicz (1975[1965]: 52) was among the first scholars to undertake new studies framed within the theory of grammaticalization. Kuryłowicz’s broadened definition of grammaticalization later became traditional: “Grammaticalization consists in the increase of the range of a morpheme advancing from a lexical to a grammatical or from a less grammatical to a more grammatical status, e.g. from a derivative formant to an inflectional one.” Thus, when grammaticalization takes place, not only must a previously lexical item enter the grammatical system, but also it becomes possible for a less grammatical item to acquire new and more grammatical functions.

Interest in Kurylowicz’s work on grammaticalization revived in the 1970’s, when Givón (1971, 1979) gave new life to grammaticalization studies, by stressing the fact that a language structure can only be understood in the light of its past (Givón, indeed, is the source of the famous slogan “today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax”). However, works consistently framed within grammaticalization theory only started flourishing during the 1980’s (cf. Lehmann 1995[1982]; Heine & Reh 1982), and persist to the present (cf. among many others Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer 1991; Traugott & Heine 1991a, 1991b; Hopper & Traugott 1993; Heine 1997; Rissanen et al. 1997; and Fischer et al. 2000). In the last decades, however, grammaticalization theory also has undergone serious criticism (cf. Section 2.2.4).