Grammatikalised

Grammatikalised is an adjective used in linguistics to describe a word, phrase, or construction that has undergone grammaticalisation, the process by which forms with lexical meanings become grammatical markers. A grammatikalised form typically shifts from a concrete content word to a function word or clitic that marks tense, aspect, mood, evidentiality, negation, definiteness, or modality, and often loses some of its original semantic content in the process.

Features commonly associated with grammatikalised forms include semantic bleaching, phonological reduction, frequent use in fixed constructions, and a narrowing of syntactic distribution. The trajectory is diachronic but can be attested synchronically in many languages, especially in the growth of auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, or determiners from more autonomous words.

Grammatikalised items may appear as auxiliary-like heads in periphrastic constructions, as clitics attached to hosts, or as particles that influence aspect or modality. The notion is closely related to grammaticalisation studies, but grammatikalised emphasizes the state of having undergone such a process rather than the process itself.

Cross-linguistically, many languages show grammatikalised forms in the evolution of tense systems, evidential markers, negation, or definiteness. Researchers document path-dependent changes, reconstructing stages from lexical to grammatical meaning, often using historical corpora and comparison across related languages.

See also: grammaticalisation, linguistic change, language history.