The availability of large electronic corpora has caused major shifts in linguistic research, including the ability to analyze much more data than ever before, and to perform micro-analyses of linguistic structures across languages. This has historical linguists to rethink many standard assumptions a[...]
Hardback edition
This is a general introduction to grammaticalization, the change whereby lexical terms and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions. The authors synthesiz[...]
Lexicalization, a process of language change, has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. Broadly defined as the adoption of concepts into the lexicon, it has been viewed by syntacticians as the reverse process of grammaticalization, by morphologists as a routine process of word-formation, and by[...]
This important study of semantic change examines how new meanings arise through language use, especially the various ways in which speakers and writers experiment with uses of words and constructions in the flow of strategic interaction with addressees. There has been growing interest in exploring s[...]
Paperback edition
This is a general introduction to grammaticalization, the change whereby lexical terms and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions. The authors synthesi[...]