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, firstly, to bring together the groups of pathways established by the text near the end of certain entries ("This process appears to be part of a more general evolution [...]; see also [...]".) Some pathways are in more than one group. As for the pathways not in any group I have attempted to place them near those groups with similar targets.

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.

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. I suspect 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.

HERE abl(6)

• spatial concepts > agents in passive constructions
  • locative > agent
  • ablative > agent
  • comitative > agent via instrumental
  • hand > agent
• • ablative > partitive possibly via a-possessive
  • ablative > material
• spatial concepts > template for standard of comparison
  • locative > comparative
  • ablative > comparative
  • up (mostly 'on, upon') > comparative

• spatial motion > tense (or aspect)
  • ablative > near past
  • come to > future
  • go to > future
  • come to > proximative
• process verbs > tense, aspect, and modality (we haven't finished)
  • come to > future
  • go to > future
  • come to > proximative
  • get > permissive via ability
  • get > possibility via ability
• epistemic modality
  • deontic modality > epistemic modality
  • ability > possibility
  • obligation > probability
• deontic modality
  • ability > permissive
• other modality
  • get > ability