Theoretical and Empirical Issues in Grammaticalization: (Rethinking Grammaticalization. New perspectives & Theoretical and Empirical Issues in Grammaticalization)

This volume and its companion oneRethinking grammaticalization: New perspectives offer a selection of papers from the Third International Conference New Reflections on Grammaticalization, held at the University of Santiago de Compostela in July 2005. The overall aim of the book is to enrich our understanding of what grammaticalization entails via detailed case studies in combination with theoretical and methodological discussions. Some of the theoretical issues discussed in the sixteen articles included in the volume are the nature of grammaticalization and related processes such as anti-, re- and degrammaticalization, the relationship between grammaticalization and lexicalization, the role of frequency in grammaticalization and the interplay between information structure and grammaticalization. Other topics covered are the grammaticalization of composite predicates in English, the emergence of modal particles in German and particle clusters in Dutch and the grammaticalization of various modal auxiliaries in Spanish and in Swedish.

Table of Contents:
1. Preface; 2. Introduction: Further reflections on grammaticalization (by Seoane, Elena); 3. Swedish ma and the (de)grammaticalization debate (by Andersson, Peter); 4. 'Where grammar and lexis meet:' Composite predicates in English (by Brinton, Laurel J.); 5. On the grammaticalization and (inter)subjectivity of evidential (semi-)auxiliaries in Spanish (by Cornillie, Bert); 6. Semantic, syntactic and constructional restrictions in the diachronic rise of modal particles in German: A corpus-based study on the formation of a grammaticalization channel (by Diewald, Gabriele); 7. Double indirect object marking in Spanish and Italian (by Dufter, Andreas); 8. The emergence of particle clusters in Dutch: Grammaticalization under adverse conditions (by Hoeksema, Jack); 9. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura (by Idiatov, Dmitry); 10. Can grammaticalization be parameterized? (by Klausenburger, Jurgen); 11. Possessive adjectives as a source of intensifiers (by Konig, Ekkehard); 12. Information structure and grammaticalization (by Lehmann, Christian); 13. From speech-situation evocation to hypotaxis: The case of Latin quamvis 'although' (by Leuschner, Torsten); 14. Grammaticalization waves: The Russian subjunctive mood and person/number marking (by Norgard-Sorensen, Jens); 15. Discourse frequency and the collapse of the adposition vs. affix distinction in Lakota (by Pustet, Regina); 16. On the grammaticalization of the Spanish expression puede que (by Espineira, Maria Jose Rodriguez); 17. On the history and present behaviour of subordinating that with adverbial conjunctions in English (by Rohdenburg, Gunter); 18. The regrammaticalization of linking elements in German (by Wegener, Heide); 19. Language index; 20. Name index; 21. Subject index

Review :
The result of this synergistic enterprise, as represented in this thoughtful and well-edited volume, is a collective endeavor that eschews dogmatic allegiance to a particular formal apparatus and takes quite seriously the charge of representing grammatical change as an intrinsic and inevitable aspect of our language facility.