Grammaticalization

This page is a list of the grammaticalization pathways to be found in Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva, World lexicon of grammaticalization, Cambridge University Press (2002). It is meant as a resource for conlangers looking for inspiration on how to express a given category.

The list is sorted by target category, with a vaguely semantic sort order, and within that by the groups established by the text near the end of certain entries noting "This process appears to be part of a more general evolution [...]; see also [...]".

Gray entries are suggested to be chains of multiple elementary steps: for example the pathway body > reciprocal is thought to proceed via body > reflexive > reciprocal. Pathways that are restricted to a certain geographic region are marked with the name of that region; doubtful or tentative pathways are queried (?).

Heine & Kuteva seem to have a theoretical preconception that there can be no pathways whose reverse is also a pathway: if dative can become genitive then the opposite can never occur. The present compiler suspects that this is overbroad and may have led them to demote to side remarks certain pathways whose reverses are better attested. The annotation (vice versa?) indicates this.

• process verbs > markers of tense, aspect, and modality (we haven't finished)
  • get > permissive
  • get > possibility
• deontic modality
  • ability > permissive
• epistemic modality
  • ability > possibility HERE

• • get > ability