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As touched upon in Section 2.2.2, the whole enterprise of grammaticalization has undergone serious critique in recent years. Joseph (2011: 193–194) summarizes the major themes that drew criticism as follows: (a) grammaticalization as a process or result; (b) privileging one cluster of developments over others; (c) alternative outcomes/results; (d) unidirectionality.1

The first criticism questions the nature of grammaticalization itself, by claiming that it is neither a distinct process nor a theoretically primitive concept, but rather merely a way of representing a whole series of independent linguistic processes or mechanisms of change, including for example sound change, semantic change, and reanalysis. Crucially, each of the mentioned changes also manifests itself independently of grammaticalization (cf. Campbell 2001; Joseph 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2011, 2014; Newmeyer 2001). As Joseph discusses in several papers, by keeping the grammaticalization process separated from the other mechanisms of change, linguists needlessly increase the dimensions of language change, which are ultimately three: (i) the physiological dimension, which is relevant for sound change; (ii) the cognitive dimension, which is the basis for analogy (of which metaphor is understood as a subtype, that is, as a conceptual analogy) and reanalysis; (iii) the social dimension, which is critical for the diffusion of language changes. Should we add to these dimensions/mechanisms of change the grammaticalization process as a distinct type of development? Or, rather, should grammaticalization be merely a label for naming the result of independently occurring processes? (cf. Joseph 2011). Moreover, if one assumes that, indeed, grammaticalization constitutes a distinct process, it remains difficult to assess how many grammaticalizations produce a certain gram, i.e. how many processes of change result in a new grammatical item or category (cf. also Janda 2001; Fischer 2011b).

A second major critical theme expresses skepticism as to whether the series of sub-processes that are grouped under grammaticalization (on which cf. Section 2.2.3) really deserve to be treated separately as special, i.e. being assigned their own label, meriting dedicated conferences, textbooks, and so forth, with respect to other (clusters of) changes with which historical linguistics is concerned. This also relates to the issue of when exactly grammaticalization happens. For example, when does grammaticalization occur in the development of the Romance future of the type of Italian canterò ‘I will sing’ from Vulgar Latin cantare habeo ‘I have to sing’ (cf. Section 2.2.3.2)? Is it when the locution cantare habeo comes to show a conventionalized future meaning even without concomitant phonetic reduction? Or rather, are phonetic reduction and univerbation necessary ingredients for grammaticalization? Or, should these two processes (semantic change and univerbation) even be regarded as two distinct grammaticalizations, though they result in a single one grammatical item and category?

Joseph’s (2011) elaboration on theme (b) directly leads us to his point (c), in which the author further emphasizes that “much more goes on in language change than just the often cited movement of lexical/somewhat-grammatical to (more) grammatical that characterizes grammaticalization” (Joseph 2011: 198). Joseph goes to discuss a number of morphological developments that cannot be subsumed under the grammaticalization rubric. These are schematized below:

1 derivational morphology > derivational morphology (e.g. resegmentation of morpheme boundaries);

2 inflectional morphology > inflectional morphology (e.g. remaking of verbal endings based on other endings);

3 inflectional morphology > derivational morphology (e.g. reanalysis of an inflectional ending as part of the stem onto which verbal endings are further added, as in the instances of the so-called Watkins’ Law; cf. Arlotto 1972; Collinge 1985).

The last line of criticism that I discuss here is one of the cornerstones of grammaticalization, specifically the so-called “unidirectionality hypothesis”: changes falling under the rubric of grammaticalization always go from less grammatical to more grammatical (Rosenbach 2004: 73; Börjars & Vincent 2011). From Givón (1971) onward, different works fairly strictly embraced the unidirectionality hypothesis, including Lehmann (1995[1982]: 16), Hopper & Traugott (1993: Chapter 5), Traugott (2001), Heine (2003), and Brinton & Traugott (2005: Chapter 4.3).

In usage-based models, unidirectionality is motivated by frequency: “Changes related to increases in frequency all move in one direction and even decreases in frequency do not condition reversals: there is no process of de-automatization or de-habituation, subtraction of pragmatic inferences, etc. Once phonetic form and semantic properties are lost, there is no way to retrieve them. Thus grammaticization [i.e. grammaticalization] is unidirectional” (Bybee 2008: 348). Other functionalist approaches also suggest that social factors drive grammaticalization, such as “the invisible hand” (Keller 1990), the communicative goal of expressiveness, and speakers’ will to speak in such a way that they are noticed (so-called “extravagance” in Haspelmath 1999: 1043) and later on imitated by other speakers (so-called “conformity”). By contrast, formalists explain unidirectionality based on some universal principles relating to the principle of Economy (cf. van Gelderen 2004, 2011), including that of “grammar optimization”, that is, the elimination of unmotivated grammatical complexity or idiosyncrasy (Kiparsky 2011).

Evidence against the unidirectionality hypothesis gathered in recent decades (e.g. among many others Ramat 1992; Haspelmath 2004; Willis 2007; Norde 2009; Kiparsky 2011) was seized upon to argue against the existence of grammaticalization as a distinct and pervasive process of linguistic change, precisely because of the said occurrence of many counterexamples (e.g. Janda 2001; Joseph 2001; Newmeyer 2001).

As in the case of grammaticalization (cf. Section 2.2.2), there exist wider and narrower definitions for the opposite process, often called “degrammaticalization”, “antigrammaticalization” or “countergrammaticalization”. For example, Newmeyer (2001: 205) considers an instance of degrammaticalization any increase in lexical content or morphological independence. In a more precise way, Norde (2010: 126) defines degrammaticalization as a change that affects several linguistic layers: “Degrammaticalization is a composite change whereby a gram in a specific context gains in autonomy or substance on more than one linguistic level (semantics, morphology, syntax, or phonology).” This view is shared by other scholars, including Willis (2007: 273), who offers a catalogue of different linguistic changes operating at different linguistic levels that can be ascribed to degrammaticalization: (i) phonological strengthening, (ii) change rightward along the cline: affix > clitic > independent word; (iii) categorial reanalysis from grammatical to lexical; (iv) metaphorical shift from abstract to concrete; (v) pragmatic inferencing from abstract to concrete. Importantly, changes (i)–(v) mirror their opposite counterparts in grammaticalization. The idea that degrammaticalization must be described in parallel to grammaticalization is common to other scholars. Haspelmath (2004: 27) for example writes as follows: “By this [i.e. antigrammaticalization] I mean a change that leads from the endpoint to the starting point of a potential grammaticalization and also shows the same intermediate stages.”