6 - Historical Development and Change

Summary

In Chapter 6, there is a review of the historical record, with the help of the Oxford English Dictionary Online, other older corpora and studies by historical linguists, in an attempt to identify earlier forms of general extenders and to trace the development of those in current use. One clear pathway of change is identified in terms of phrases with specific reference becoming more general in their range of reference and even losing referential function over time. Detailed paths of development are provided for all the most common forms. The different processes involved in grammaticalization are also described and illustrated, with attention given to lexical replacement, semantic bleaching, morphosyntactic and phonological change and pragmatic shift.