grammaticalisering

Grammaticalisering, or grammaticalization, is a diachronic process in which lexical items or independent words lose part of their concrete lexical meaning and shift toward grammatical function. Through this change, they become new grammatical markers that encode features such as tense, aspect, mood, evidentiality, or function words, often gaining fixed distribution and reduced phonetic form.

The process typically involves semantic bleaching, whereby a word loses its concrete content, followed by reanalysis of its syntactic role and increased fixation within a grammatical construction. Phonetic reduction, cliticization, and generalization of use across contexts frequently accompany grammaticalization, which often proceeds along gradual, gradualist paths and can be influenced by frequency, analogy, and language contact.

Classic pathways include the development of future tense markers from lexical verbs (for example, English will and be going to, which originate from desire or motion expressions), the shift of a preposition toward a non-finite infinitival marker (to in English), and the use of auxiliary have or be as perfect or progressive markers. These trajectories illustrate how diverse sources—verbs, prepositions, or adjectives—can converge on grammatical function through repeated use in similar syntactic environments.

Grammaticalization is a central concept in historical and functional linguistics and has been studied across languages and time. It highlights interactions between semantics, syntax, and pragmatics, and its analysis has shaped theories about how language change proceeds, the cognitive economy of grammar, and the formation of grammatical systems. Scholarly work by Meillet, Lehmann, and later Heine and Kuteva remains influential.