Usage‐based theory and grammaticalization

This article treats grammaticalisation in the context of usage-based grammar. It examines how usage effects propel grammaticalisation on the phonetic, semantic, and syntactic dimensions, focusing on structural changes. It analyses the chunking of contiguous units, phonetic reduction due to neuromotor automatisation, semantic generalization, pragmatic inferencing, and growing autonomy with its loss of compositionality and analysability. It shows that the loss of analysability is the mechanism behind decategorialisation and reduction in constituent structure and argues that reanalysis in...

This article treats grammaticalisation in the context of usage-based grammar. It examines how usage effects propel grammaticalisation on the phonetic, semantic, and syntactic dimensions, focusing on structural changes. It analyses the chunking of contiguous units, phonetic reduction due to neuromotor automatisation, semantic generalization, pragmatic inferencing, and growing autonomy with its loss of compositionality and analysability. It shows that the loss of analysability is the mechanism behind decategorialisation and reduction in constituent structure and argues that reanalysis in grammaticalisation is unidirectional and results in a loss of constituent structure.