Overview

This book probes into the nature of grammaticalization on the basis of an in-depth study of the process of auxiliation. Auxiliation is understood as the development of constructions into markers of tense, aspect, and modality. The book is an important contribution to the theory of grammaticalization (and language change in general), grammatical typology, and also to the study of human communication. Its originality lies on the one hand in the uncovering of new linguistic facts involving, among other things, the identification of the category of the avertive as a cross-linguistically valid grammatical distinction. On the other hand, it offers a new perspective on how grammaticalization happens in everyday linguistic communication. Particularly revealing is the study of the potential role that abductive reasoning and mismatches in discourse world knowledge between speaker and hearer play as a motivation for grammatical language change. Bringing together the explanatory potential of recent grammaticalization theory, and the insights from the latest studies of the psychology of language use, this book represents a valuable achievement in the investigation of grammatical language change and linguistic communication in general.

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9780198299745

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a valuable ocntribution to the theory of grammaticalization and language change Maria Kasperkiewicz, Research in Language There is a high standard of scholarship evident throughout the book, with quite original discussions of auxiliation, particularly as it applies in Bulgarian. The inclusion of speech act dynamics as part of the larger discussion is an important new direction for grammaticalization research and Kuteva does an excellent job of arguing the case for the relevance of a particular kind of communicative mismatch in this type of research. As such, I consider this an important book and one that will be profitably read by all those interested in grammaticalization. Journal of Linguistics This book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the inner mechanisms of grammatical language change, and human communication in general. Folia Linguistica

Author Information

Tania Kuteva is Professor of English Linguistics at the Institute for English Studies, University of Düsseldorf. She has worked with Professor Bernd Heine on the rise of grammatical functions in the languages of the world. He main publications are in the areas of grammaticalization and typology. This is her first book.

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