Grammaticalization is an important concept in general and typological linguistics and a prominent type of explanation in historical linguistics. For historical corpus linguists, grammaticalization theory provides a frame of orientation in their effort to analyze and systematize a fast-accumulating mass of data. Students of grammaticalization have become increasingly aware of the potential of existing corpora and established corpus-linguistic methodology for their work. This book continues and develops the dialogue between the two fields. All the contributions are based on extensive use of various electronic corpora. Relating corpus practices to recent theoretical concerns of grammaticalization studies they deal with grammaticalization and historical sociolinguistics, lexicalization and grammaticalization, layering, frequency, grammaticalization and dialects, degrammaticalization and grammaticalization in a contrastive perspective. The papers show that a synthesis of corpus methodology and grammaticalization studies leads to new and interesting insights about the mechanisms of language change and the communicative functions of language.

Table of contents

Preface vii Introduction Hans Lindquist and Christian Mair ix–xiv Three perspectives on grammaticalization: Lexico-grammar, corpora and historical sociolinguistics Terttu Nevalainen 1–31 Have to, gotta, must? Grammaticalisation, variation and specialization in English deontic modality Sali A. Tagliamonte 33–55 The semantic path from modality to aspect: be able to in a cross-linguistic perspective Karin Aijmer 57–78 The passival and the progressive passive: A case study of layering in the English aspect and voice systems Marianne Hundt 79–120 Corpus linguistics and grammaticalisation theory: Statistics, frequencies, and beyond Christian Mair 121–150 Grammaticalisation from side to side: On the development of beside(s)  Matti Rissanen 151–170 Are low-frequency complex prepositions grammaticalized? On the limits of corpus data — and the importance of intuition Sebastian Hoffmann 171–210 Life after degrammaticalisation: Plural be Laura Wright 211–226 Subject clitics in English: A case of degrammaticalization?* Laurel J. Brinton 227–256 Name index 257 Subject index 259