Lectures on Grammaticalization

Brian D. Joseph, professor in Linguistics and South Slavic languages at Ohio State University, will present two lectures in Bergen. They will be held in SH:E (Aud. E, Sydneshaugen skole) on Thursday 20 and Friday 21 May from 14:15 to 16:00.

Part I: A General Critique of Grammaticalization
Part II: Is there Such a Thing as Contact Grammaticalization?

The notion of ‘grammaticalization’ — the embedding into grammatical status of once non- (or less-) grammatical phenomena — has enjoyed broad acceptance as a new paradigm for describing and accounting for linguistic change. Despite its appeal, my contention is that there are numerous foundational problems with ‘grammaticalization’ as it is conventionally described and discussed in the literature. I thus offer here in my first lecture a general critique of grammaticalization in which I explore what some of these problems are, and then in my second lecture turn to a consideration of the applicability of the principles of grammaticalization in language contact situations, an enterprise which I see as equally fraught with problems. My overall goal is to try to come to an understanding of where grammaticalization has gone wrong and what it has gotten right.