This section provides a more detailed discussion of these cases of degrammaticalization. While some early works refuted the existence of degrammaticalization (e.g. Lehmann 1982, Heine et al. 1991, Haspelmath 1999), it is currently more accepted that it does indeed exist (Ramat 1992, van der Auwera 2002, Hopper and Traugott 2003: 130-139, Haspelmath 2004, Norde 2009). Researchers tend to disagree with regard to their respective definitions of degrammaticalization, which can explain why they also disagree regarding its existence.
Some of these controversies surrounding the notion of degrammaticalization have been discussed in Norde (2010). In earlier work, Norde (2006) defined degrammaticalization on the basis of Hopper and Traugott’s (2003: 7) cline, which was introduced in section 2.4 and which is repeated here:
content item > grammatical word > clitic > inflectional affix
The basic definition is that degrammaticalization consists in shifts from the right to the left of the cline. However, Norde (2010) proposes a more specific definition of the phenomenon, where it is described as “a change whereby a gram in a specific context gains in autonomy or substance on one or more linguistic levels (semantics, morphology, syntax, and phonology)” (Norde 2010: 126). In this definition, the term “gram” refers to a grammatical morpheme (e.g. function word, clitic, affix) as introduced in Bybee et al. (1994). This definition also uses the notion of autonomy, as did Meillet’s (1912) original definition of grammaticalization discussed in section 2.1.
Another important note is that in the same way that there is “primary” (i.e. lexical to grammatical) grammaticalization and “secondary” (i.e. less to more grammaticalized) grammaticalization, there are also two types of degrammaticalization. The first type is primary degrammaticalization, which involves the shift from a grammatical element to a lexical element, and the second type is secondary degrammaticalization, which consists in a grammaticalized element (in particular a bound morpheme from the right end of the cline) becoming less grammaticalized. Norde (2010: 136) notes however that unlike grammaticalization, where an element might move all the way from content item to an affix, and therefore undergo primary and secondary grammaticalization, cases of degrammaticalization generally do not progress in the opposite direction as part of a chain. A potential counterexample to this claim is the suffix -taga in Saami which developed into a clitic, then into a postposition and then into an independent adverb (Janda 2001: 127). It should be noted however that in such an example, the element in question technically first undergoes “secondary” degrammaticalization, and then “primary” degrammaticalization, which shows that the terms primary and secondary are somewhat tricky. This is therefore a characteristic specific to degrammaticalization, where primary and secondary degrammaticalization are rather separate phenomena.
While the basic definition of degrammaticalization according to which items move from right to left on the cline seems rather obvious, there is in fact much disagreement when it
comes to specific examples of degrammaticalization. If one considers the use of a grammatical item as a lexical one as an example of degrammaticalization, then any case of conversion from a grammatical to a lexical category would be considered as an example of degrammaticalization. For instance, the conjunctions but and if can be used as nouns in a sentence such as I sense an if is coming. They also have common nominal characteristics, such as having a plural form (e.g. there were two buts in your sentence). According to Haspelmath (1999: 1064, footnote 1) these cases are metalinguistic uses of these function words and are not instances of degrammaticalization.
Norde (2009: 3), building on Andersen (2006), proposes the term “degrammation” to refer to instances of degrammaticalization where “a function word is reanalysed as a content item, often as a result of pragmatic inferencing”.4 However, Norde (2009) also distinguishes between degrammation and lexicalization. When grammatical elements are taken “out of their context” to be used as lexical elements (e.g. to up and to down), this pertains to lexicalization and not degrammaticalization. It should also be noted that the boundary between lexicalization and grammaticalization is sometimes blurry and that the issue also has to do with how these concepts are defined (Brinton and Traugott 2005).
There are two other types of degrammaticalization that are proposed in Norde (2009) that complement degrammation, since the latter only accounts for primary degrammaticalization. The two other types are called “deinflectionalization” and “debonding”. Deinflectionalization concerns inflectional affixes that become less bound and debonding involves bound morphemes (thus including derivational affixes) becoming free. As stated earlier, the research presented in the following chapters is not focused on affixes and the “right end” of the grammaticalization cline and as such, deinflectionalization and debonding will not be further discussed here.
In addition to the examples above, there is also a process known as insubordination (Evans and Wantanabe 2016) which can be thought of as an instance of degrammaticalization. It consists in the reanalysis of a subordinate clause as an independent one. This process differs from the examples presented previously because it does not entail the creation of a new lexical item and is more concerned with syntactic role. For instance, If you could shut up can be a sentence of its own, instead of being a subordinate clause in more complex sentences such as It would be great if you could shut up or If you could shut up, I would be able to focus.
In this situation, there is a clear gain in autonomy (i.e. becoming a sentence of its own), which is in line with the concept of degrammaticalization.
To summarize, section 2.4 has discussed the idea that unidirectionality is a strong tendency of grammaticalization and further empirical investigation of this idea will be presented in chapter 6. However, the current section has also argued in favour of the existence of degrammaticalization, which means that there are exceptions to the notion that grammaticalization is unidirectional. Examples have been discussed to illustrate what is considered as degrammation in the present dissertation. The next section discusses whether grammaticalization is universal among languages and whether it occurs similarly across languages.