Grammaticalization as economy - Gelderen, Elly van (John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2004)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-306) and indexes
Grammaticalization as Economy; Editorial page; Title page; LCC page; Table of contents; Acknowledgements; Notes for the reader; List of tables; Part I; Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Part II; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6; Part III; Chapter 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Part IV; Chapter 12; Chapter 13; Notes; References; Index; The series Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today
This book provides much detail on the changes involving the grammaticalization of personal and relative pronouns, topicalized nominals, complementizers, adverbs, prepositions, modals, perception verbs, and aspectual markers. It accounts for these changes in terms of two structural economy principles. Head Preference expresses that single words, i.e. heads, are used to build structures rather than full phrases, and Late Merge states that waiting as late as possible to merge, i.e. be added to the structure, is preferred over movement. The book also discusses grammar-external processes (e.g. pres