"Thoughts on grammaticalization" was first published in a working-paper
version in 1982 and became very influential immediately, even though it
was properly published only in 1995. Despite its modest title, the book
can be read as an advanced introduction to grammaticalization, though
its conception is very original. The present edition contains a number
of corrections of the 1995 edition. After a short review of the history
of research, the work introduces and delimits the concepts related to
grammaticalization. It then provides extensive exemplification of
grammaticalization phenomena in diverse languages, ordered by
grammatical domains such as the verbal, pronominal and nominal sphere
and clause level relations. The final chapter presents a theory of
grammaticalization which is based on the autonomy of the linguistic sign
with respect to the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes. This is the basis
of the structural parameters that constitute grammaticalization. They
are operationalized to the point of rendering degrees of
grammaticalization measurable.

https://www.christianlehmann.eu/publ/ASSidUE09.pdf

Thoughts on Grammaticalization

Much of the work that is labeled "deseriptive" within linguistics comprises two activities, the collection of primary data and a (low-level) analysis of these data. These are indeed two separate activities as shown by the fact that the methods employed in each activity differ substantially. To date, the field concerned with the first aetivity — called "doeumentary linguisties" here — has received very little attention from linguists. It is proposed that documentary linguistics be conceived of as a fairly independent field of linguistic inquiry and practice that is no longer linked exclusively to the descriptive framework. A format for language documentations (in contrast to language deseriptions) is presented (section 2), and various practical and theoretical issues connected with this format are discussed. These include the rights of the individuals and communities contributing to a language doeumentation (section 3.1), the parameters for the selection of the data to be included in a doeumentation (section 3.2), and the assessment of the quality of such data (section 3.3),

Documentary and descriptive linguistics

Introduction 1. Historical-Philological Semantics 2. Structuralist Semantics 3. Generativist Semantics 4. Neostructuralist Semantics 5. Cognitive Semantics Conclusion References

Theories of Lexical Semantics

This article takes as its point of departure an unusual phonological change in a Czech dialect. It then propores a model of phonological change which would make possible the undentanding of structural innovationr in the phonology of a homogeneous speech community. The model, which distinguishes two logically different modes o£ change (abductive and deductive), helps clarify the essential difference between 'internally motivated' change and change 'induced from without'. The model uses our experience of observed phonetic changes, and may consequently have some bearing on our understanding of the structure of phonology. t.1. In some localities in the Litomysl area in northeastern Bohemia, the traditional dialects as still spoken toward the end of the l9th century differed from the surroundirlg Czech dialects by a striking peculiarity: the occunence of apico-alveolar consonants /t d n/ correspondmg to Proto-Slavic bilabial consonants p *b *m in a small and dimini.shing number of very common lesemes, e.g. /koutit/ (Standard Czech koupsti) 'buy', /tekiie/ (pdknZ) 'nicely'? /di:lej/ (bfl§) 'white', /deiet/ (bet«eti) 'run?, /deemeno/ (bremeno) 'burden?, /ni:t/ (mfti) 'have', /nesto/ (mGsto) 'town'.l The LitomyFl dentals are mentioned in several 19th century works on Czech dialectology; they were even used in literary works as late as the 1890's to characterize foLk speech in that area. But even at that time, the dentals occurred only in the speech of the oldest generation of speakers and were an object of ridicule, celebrated in alliterating jeers like /ti:te ti:vo Nak je s tenou/ (P{te pivo vGak je s pGnou!) 'Drink yor beer, never mind the head!' or /holoude f troude na di:li: ni:se/ (Holoube v troubG na bBlf mBse) 'The young pigeon in the oven is on a white platter.' Now only a couple of etymologically isolated lexemes preserve this peculiarity of the old TetAk dialects as I will call them.g. /prati:sko/ (prapBsek) 'door post', /didla/ (bidla) 'flail', if thev are indeed still used.2 But it is clear from the endence that at one time in the past-as recently as the 1840's, according to Hodura (cited in Bblid 1966:40) the dialects in question regularly had dentals as reflexes of Proto-Slanc labials in certain environments.

Abductive and deductive change

Research into the phenomenon of morphological productivity, “the possibility for language users to coin, unintentionally, a number of formations which are in principle uncountable” (Schultink 1961), has mainly focused on the qualitative factors which jointly determine the productivity of word formation rules. It is well known that word formation processes are subject to various syntagmatic conditions. Booij (1977) develops a typology of such conditioning factors, distinguishing between rule-specific and rule-independent restrictions on the one hand, and between restrictions pertaining to phonological, stratal and syntactic characteristics on the other.1 The role of pardigmatic factors is discussed in van Marie (1985). He points out that (roughly) synonymous affixes tend to select their base words from complementary domains. Hence they can be analyzed as mutually affecting their respective degrees of productivity.

Quantitative aspects of morphological productivity

Principios de semántica estructural

Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general

Lecciones de lingüística general

Sincronía, diacronía e historia : El problema del cambio lingüístico

'Conoscere e distinguere' (B. Croce): To attain scientific knowledge is, first of all, to make distinctions. Hence, if I were asked what I consider to be my main contribution to the understanding of language and consequently to the foundation of linguistics or, to put it in other words, what constitutes my permanent frame of reference, the very often implicit fundamental principle underlying my treatment of the different, general, or particular linguistic problems, I would answer that it is a relatively simple distinction, one also made intuitively by the speakers of any language, which became entirely clear to me only around I955; in any case, it was only in 1955 that I formulated it explicitly and undertook to justify it.1 This distinction, which originated as a result of the discomfort with the distinction langue/parole, language/speech in the context of the post-Saussurean discussion of these notions, concerns in reality the levels of language, but applies first of all to what in the last decades has been called 'linguistic competence' and what I called at that time and still continue to call 'linguistic knowledge' (saber lingiiistico). And I consider this distinction to be important, as it enables us to assign a precise position to the different problem areas of linguistics and to its various questions with respect to the complex object language. It has been, for me at least, a helpful epistemological frame of reference for the interpretation not only of the various linguistic problems ranging from that of linguistic change to that of translation and of linguistic correctness, but also of the structure of the linguistic disciplines themselves and of recent developments in linguistics.2 I shall say more about this in the second half of this lecture. Let us first consider the distinction as such and its justification. Alan Gardiner, one of the most penetrating commentators of the distinction made by Saussure between langue and parole, interprets this distinction as a distinction between language as the activity of speaking and the underlying knowledge or technique of this activity (science, knowledge): 'Speech is ... a universally exerted activity.... In describing this activity, we shall discover that it consists in the application of a universally possessed science, namely the science which we call language. ... Language is a collective term, and embraces in its compass all those items of knowledge which enable a speaker to make effective use of word-signs.'3 For Gardiner, speech and language in this sense are not coextensive: inasmuch as it is realized, language is entirely contained in speech; speech on the other hand is not only the realization of language, since it exhibits, along with 'the facts of language', features by which it differs from language or rather by which it goes beyond language ('facts of speech'). Gardiner thinks that the distinction thus formulated

Eugenio Coseriu

Papers

Principios de semántica estructural

Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general

Lecciones de lingüística general

Sincronía, diacronía e historia : El problema del cambio lingüístico

Linguistic Competence: What Is It Really?