1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910966489703321

Titolo

Grammaticalization : current views and issues / / edited by Katerina Stathi, Elke Gehweiler, Ekkehard König

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Amsterdam, : John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2010

ISBN

9786612775062

9781282775060

1282775065

9789027288004

9027288003

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

vi, 379 p. : ill

Collana

Studies in language companion series (SLCS), , 0165-7763 ; ; v. 119

Altri autori (Persone)

StathiKaterina

GehweilerElke

KönigEkkehard

Disciplina

415

Soggetti

Grammar, Comparative and general - Grammaticalization

English language - Grammaticalization

English language - Discourse analysis

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

"The present volume grew out of the symposium "What's new in grammaticalization?", which was held at the Freie Unversität Berlin, May 11-12, 2007."

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

pt. 1. Basic questions -- pt. 2. Grammaticalization and the explanation of language change -- pt. 3. Case studies of micro-processes of grammaticalization.

Sommario/riassunto

After the pioneering work of Lehmann (1982), grammaticalization has been at the centre of linguistic discussion, both as a theoretical basis for empirical diachronic studies and as a topic of inquiry itself. The present paper pertains to the first line of research and deals with an ongoing micro-process of grammaticalization in Italian: the emergence of a new reciprocal marker, namely uninflected l'un l'altro, which appears to be commonly produced by young people and frequently used in the language of the Internet. Synchronic analysis of its occurrence has revealed that the new pattern is semantically restricted to either intransitive or ordinary reciprocal predicates, whereas it is



totally avoided in inherently reciprocal situations and always expresses the iteration or sequentiality of the sub-actions. These semantic constraints play a significant role in the diachronic development of a two-quantifier construction into a reciprocal marker; evidence of the fact that the two constructions are likely to represent two different but subsequent stages of the same linguistic development.