Grammaticalization Scenarios: Cross-linguistic Variation and Universal Tendencies

Grammaticalization is a process of language change through which words representing objects and actions are transferred into grammatical markers. New function words are thus created by deriving them from content words, instead of from existing bound, inflectional constructions. Some concepts are grammaticalized, while others like evidentiality are not. A distinction between lexical items and grammatical items is integral to the understanding of the process of grammaticalization. Lexical ite...