Grammaticalization

Abstract

Since the beginnings of grammaticalization studies in the nineteenth century, morphological issues, especially ones related to compounding and derivation, have been central to students of grammaticalization. In earlier studies, grammaticalization was tendentially represented as a kind of ‘dynamic morphology’. This entry points out a few general features that characterize the intersection between grammaticalization and morphology and is exclusively interested in evolutions that have lexical items as their source. Two controversial topics are also discussed: the role that discourse markers play in grammatical change, which involves a cognitive–communicative operation called co‐optation; and the way contact‐induced change affects grammaticalization.