The aim of this lecture series is to provide a comprehensive introduction into the conceptual and empirical field of grammaticalization. It introduces the basic concepts of grammaticalization theory and the methods to determine and measure grammaticalization by means of analyzed examples from diverse languages.
Many of the data and examples are drawn from Indo-European languages. This not only corresponds to my own specialization. It is also due to the fact that appropriate historical data, going back some thousands of years, are not available for many languages. In particular, Chinese does have a written history of some thousands of years. However, first the writing system hides some important changes affecting linguistic signs. As a result, processes of grammaticalization are harder to detect. Second, less linguistic research on grammaticalization in Chinese has been executed, so there are less analyzed data available. This lecture series also aims at contributing to change this research situation for the better.1
Other Non-Indo-European languages which provide data include Yucatec Maya (Mayan, Mexico) and Cabecar (Chibchan, Costa Rica). These are languages on which I have done fieldwork and which are very different from each other and from the other languages used for illustration.
The examples are provided with an interlinear gloss which follows the standards published in Lehmann 2004[I] and on my website on glossing.2 The latter incorporates and updates the Leipzig Glossing Rules.
While many diverse cases of grammaticalization from different languages are presented, they differ with respect to the evidence adduced. In principle, whenever there exist data apt to provide historical evidence of some phenomenon, these should be used. I do this in some cases, especially for some languages with whose history I am familiar. In other cases, I use made-up examples. Such examples can prove nothing; they only serve to illustrate a descriptive claim which might be too abstract without an example. The case studies of the former kind may serve, to some extent, as models of how one would describe a certain case of grammaticalization in a language with sufficient documented history.
The lecture series tries to keep an overall introductory level. In the past half century, more has been published on grammaticalization than I have been able to take into account. The text of this lecture series is heavily based on my own work on grammaticalization, which is listed in the bibliography and which contains more discussion of other publications. Some passages reproduce the text of my earlier publications.
The text is organized more by didactic than by systematic principles. The initial sections address beginners, among them students who are unfamiliar with the European linguistic tradition and/or with diachronic linguistics. Since grammaticalization can be fully understood only in its relationship with other kinds of grammatical variation, at least the fundamentals of these latter are introduced, too. Consulting the website www.christianlehmann.eu, particularly the section ‘Termini’, may help solve terminological problems.
Finally, in non-specific reference, the pronoun he and its forms imply nothing about the sex of their referent.
It remains for me to thank Thomas Li and his team for organizing CIFCL 23, the participants of the online lecture series for their interesting discussion, and some colleagues on the LingTyp list for helpful advice on some tricky problems.
It is no coincidence that by far the most hits turned up by a web search engine in a search for ‘Chinese etymology’ do not deal at all with etymology but with the historical development of Chinese writing. There is also a page (https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2910) which rightfully complains about this.