Grammatical Words and Spreading of Contexts

Evidence from the Spanish Preposition a

Bibliographic Data

ID6898379
AuthorsCompany, Company Company, Concepcion Company Company (0000-0002-6351-715X, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume4
Issue1
Pages10
Publication date2019-02-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages4010010
OpenAlexW4235989695
LanguageEN
References cited17

The paper shows that when grammatical words are involved, context is then the unit of language change. Certain changes consist in an active spreading of a form to new contexts, without changing the category or grammatical status of the form; in these cases, context must be considered the unit of language change. The empirical evidence is the diachrony of the Spanish preposition a ‘to’. Throughout history, this preposition pervasively extended to new and different contexts, but the form a never changed, remaining a grammatical preposition with a basic meaning of ‘directive telicity towards a goal’ (goal maybe locative, temporal, transitivity, finality, discursive, etc.). The paper labels this kind of change as ‘context construction’, and considers it an analogical extension induced by context. Finally, to test whether the diachrony of a is grammaticalization or not, the paper reviews fourteen related theoretical concepts, checking them against the diachronic evidence of the preposition a

Grammatical category · Grammaticalization · Linguistics · Locative case · Noun · Transitive relation · Computer Science · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access