Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35-2571

Title: Ten Lectures on Grammaticalization
Subtitle: An Introduction
Series Title: Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Brill
http://www.brill.com
Book URL: https://brill.com/display/title/69636

Author(s): Christian Lehmann

Reviewer: Pavel Egizaryan

SUMMARY

The book “Ten Lectures on Grammaticalization” is authored by Christian Lehmann, Professor Emeritus of General and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Erfurt, Germany. It is based on a series of online lectures delivered in 2023 as part of the China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics. Designed as an accessible introduction to the topic, the lectures do not presuppose any specialized background, making the book suitable for a broad academic audience, including students and scholars new to the field.

The first two lectures serve as an overview of what grammaticalization is and how it can be analyzed. Lecture 1, “Introduction,” provides a basic definition of grammaticalization and presents illustrative examples of classical grammaticalization processes, such as the development of definite and indefinite articles, the progressive aspect, and the synthetic future. These processes are traced in their historical evolution — for example, from Old to Modern English, and from Latin to Spanish and Portuguese. The lecture also introduces key concepts that are explored in greater depth throughout the book, including paradigmatization, obligatoriness, variability, and fixation.

Lecture 2, “Basic Concepts of Grammaticalization Theory,” offers a brief historical overview of grammaticalization studies and introduces foundational linguistic notions essential for understanding the phenomenon. Lehmann discusses the organization of the language system and explains how linguistic elements lose their original motivation as they acquire structural constraints. The lecture also explores the criteria for identifying linguistic units undergoing grammaticalization and highlights the relationship between synchronic and diachronic perspectives in grammaticalization research.
The next three lectures are devoted to establishing the unique status of grammaticalization among other processes affecting language structure. Lecture 3, “Types of Variation in Grammar,” examines grammaticalization in contrast to analogical change and reanalysis. Analogy is described as a process that alters linguistic forms independently of their original state, whereas grammaticalization is inherently grounded in the historical development of existing linguistic elements. Reanalysis, in turn, is a one-time structural reinterpretation of a linguistic unit, while grammaticalization is a multi-layered, gradual process. Although reanalysis may accompany grammaticalization, it can also occur independently. In addition, the lecture explores the possible structural consequences of grammaticalization: it may either renew an existing grammatical category or introduce a completely new one.

Lecture 4, “Criteria and Parameters of Grammaticalization,” focuses on the internal mechanisms and dimensions of the grammaticalization process. Lehmann identifies three aspects of a linguistic element’s autonomy — cohesion, variability, and weight — each of which can be analyzed from either a paradigmatic or a syntagmatic perspective. This framework yields the core processes that characterize grammaticalization: paradigmatization, obligatorification, desemanticization/erosion, coalescence, fixation, and condensation. Together, they offer a detailed understanding of how linguistic items shift from lexical to grammatical status, both structurally and functionally.

Lecture 5, “Delimiting Grammaticalization,” addresses the challenge of distinguishing grammaticalization from other, often conflated, linguistic processes. Lehmann emphasizes that phenomena such as lexicalization, morphologization, and conversion are sometimes mistakenly labeled as grammaticalization, despite their differing mechanisms and outcomes. The lecture aims to clarify these distinctions.

In Lectures 6 to 8, the author continues examining the internal characteristics of grammaticalization. Lecture 6, “Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects of Grammaticalization,” focuses on the development of grammatical meaning. It explores how such meaning can emerge from desemanticized or metaphorically extended linguistic elements, and how this process affects the pragmatic functions of these elements within discourse.

Lecture 7, “Grammaticalization in Some Functional Domains,” offers an in-depth exploration of three specific cases of grammaticalization. These include the evolution of copular verbs, the development of case relations, and the emergence of aspectual markers across languages from different families. The lecture demonstrates how grammaticalization processes manifest within distinct functional domains, illustrating both universal tendencies and language-specific paths of change.

Lecture 8, “Directionality of Grammaticalization,” addresses the question of whether grammaticalization is a directed and largely unidirectional process. The author argues that grammaticalization typically follows a consistent path from lexical to grammatical, and from less to more grammatical. Cases of degrammaticalization — where grammatical forms revert to lexical or less grammatical ones — are discussed as extremely rare and controversial, requiring further investigation to be fully understood.

The last two lectures offer a broader perspective on grammaticalization. Lecture 9, “Grammaticalization and Linguistic Typology,” explores how syntactic, morphological, and lexical features can be examined cross-linguistically through the lens of grammaticalization theory. The author also addresses the role of grammaticalization in processes of language contact and in the genesis and evolution of language itself.

Finally, Lecture 10, “Cognitive Basis of Grammaticalization,” builds a bridge between linguistic theory and cognitive science by addressing processes such as consciousness, control, and automation in human activity. Lehmann formulates verifiable and falsifiable hypotheses concerning the cognitive mechanisms that underlie grammaticalization.

EVALUATION

“Ten Lectures on Grammaticalization” is a brilliant and comprehensive introduction to grammaticalization studies. Exceptionally detailed, the book provides a multifaceted perspective on a wide range of issues related to the role of grammaticalization in language evolution. Moreover, it addresses a number of theoretical and methodological questions in a way that could serve as a valuable model even for research in adjacent areas of linguistics.

The structure of the book is remarkably coherent and logically organized. As outlined in the summary, it is divided into several thematic blocks, guiding the reader from general introductory topics — such as the differentiation of grammaticalization from other processes — through formal and typological discussions and toward more cognitive and theoretical reflections. One of the book’s key strengths lies in its consistent historical approach to demonstrating grammaticalization. Each proposed case is supported by contextual evidence from earlier stages of language development, showing how the same construction was once used in a less desemanticized, less bounded, and less grammaticalized way. Lehmann is meticulous in laying out his methodology and consistently highlights the structural principles underlying his analysis.

The theoretical foundation of the book is equally solid. The author draws on a wide range of influential scholars — from Humboldt and Meillet to Jakobson, Coseriu, Bybee, and Wierzbicka — integrating their contributions into a reflective and cohesive narrative.

Despite maintaining exceptionally high standards in data selection and interpretation, Lehmann presents dozens of diverse examples drawn from languages around the world. In addition to many Indo-European languages, the book includes data from Chinese, Vietnamese, Mayan, and Cabécar, reflecting the author’s extensive typological expertise and fieldwork experience. This breadth will undoubtedly appeal to scholars seeking a more comprehensive perspective beyond the boundaries of their own areas of specialization.

That said, a work of this complexity naturally raises some questions and invites discussion. For example, the treatment of Brazilian Portuguese verbal conjugation (pp. 11–12) appears somewhat simplified. Firstly, it seems terminologically more accurate to refer to Old Portuguese rather than European Portuguese as the intermediary stage between Latin and Brazilian Portuguese. More importantly, the claim that “an affix may be directly reduced to zero” seems imprecise here, since most forms in Brazilian Portuguese are not the result of straightforward erosion. While the author notes that the second person normally triggers third-person verb agreement, similar developments occur elsewhere: the normative first-person plural pronoun “nós” is increasingly replaced by “a gente”, which requires third-person singular agreement (Taylor 2009). Even the third-person plural “eles” may be replaced by the formally singular “o pessoal” (Novaes 1997), again taking third-person singular verbs.

Some ideas in the book would also benefit from further elaboration. For instance, the claim that modern feminist language users contribute to the re-semanticization of grammatical gender (pp. 59, 135) is intriguing but underexplained. As a native speaker of Russian, a language with grammatical gender, I find it difficult to understand how the assumption that gender encodes sex could lead to degrammaticalization. This association seems rather intuitive, and it remains unclear how it would undermine the grammatical status of the category.

Another potentially ambiguous case is the interpretation of elements like German “zig” as instances of degrammaticalization (pp. 134–135). While these morphemes may indeed show signs of increased syntactic autonomy, one might wonder whether the numerals they derive from are accessed holistically rather than analytically — a criterion that Lehmann himself associates with lexicalization rather than grammaticalization (p. 74). This raises the question of whether such developments might be better viewed as instances of lexical change following morphologization, rather than clear cases of a reversal in grammatical status.

These comments are not intended as criticism but as invitations to dialogue. They in no way undermine the outstanding quality of the book, which will undoubtedly prove highly valuable both to students and experienced researchers seeking a deeper understanding of current theoretical developments in grammaticalization studies.

REFERENCES

Taylor, Michael. 2009. On the pronominal status of Brazilian Portuguese “a gente”. NYU Working Papers in Linguistics 2. 1–36.

Novaes, Celso. 1997. Representação mental do sujeito nulo no Português do Brasil. Revista de Estudos da Linguagem 6(2). 59-80.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Pavel Egizaryan is an independent researcher specializing in Romance linguistics. He received his Ph.D. from Lomonosov Moscow State University, with a dissertation focused on lexical and grammatical means of expressing futurity in modern European Portuguese, particularly the distribution of verb forms influenced by phonetic, aspectual, modal, and pragmatic factors. His broader interests include tense–aspect systems, deixis, diachronic linguistics, and the intersection of grammar and discourse. He is also engaged in science communication and popularization of the humanities.