Grammaticalization and 'lateral' grammaticalization: new perspectives on linguistic interfaces and functional categories

Simpson and Wu (2002a) analyse Chinese shi-de constructions and propose a new type of grammaticalization in the Minimalist framework called ‘lateral’ grammaticalization, which conforms to Roberts and Roussou (2003) and van Gelderen’s (2004a, 2011) Minimalist analysis of grammaticalization in that it displays ‘structural simplification’ but differs from it in that it does not show Roberts and Roussou’s (2003:200) ‘upward feature analysis’, since it consists of a ‘lateral’ reanalysis from one functional category (D) to another (T). This entails empirical differences, namely the lack of phonological, morphological and semantic weakening in the grammaticalizing elements (Chinese shi and de) when it is traditionally assumed that weakening is a diagnostic trait of grammaticalization and is entailed by the rise in frequency of the grammaticalizing element (Bybee (2003, 2011)). This dissertation proposes a direct comparison between ‘standard’ grammaticalization (Roberts and Roussou (2003), van Gelderen (2004, 2011), e.g. the Romance future (Latin habere)) and ‘lateral’ grammaticalization (Simpson and Wu (2002a), Wu (2004), e.g. Chinese shi and de) and argues that the different formal properties (‘upward feature analysis’/’lateral feature analysis’) entails differences in collostructional frequencies (cf Stefanowitsch and Gries (2003, 2004)) which can be correlated with the differences in morphophonological weakening in grammaticalization. The traditional assumption that functional categories are necessarily weak (see e.g. Roberts and Roussou (2003:217-229)) is hence deemed as simplistic (if not mistaken), and a new mechanism in generative syntax-phonology interface is proposed where the empirical properties of functional categories are argued to be derivable from their frequencies in grammaticalization, which will be known as ‘Functional Spell-Out’.