TY  - BOOK
A1  - Pfau, Roland
A1  - Steinbach, Markus
T1  - Modality-independent and modality-specific aspects of grammaticalization in sign languages
N2  - One type of internal diachronic change that has been extensively studied for spoken languages is grammaticalization whereby lexical elements develop into free or bound grammatical elements. Based on a wealth of spoken languages, a large amount of prototypical grammaticalization pathways has been identified. Moreover, it has been shown that desemanticization, decategorialization, and phonetic erosion are typical characteristics of grammaticalization processes. Not surprisingly, grammaticalization is also responsible for diachronic change in sign languages. Drawing data from a fair number of sign languages, we show that grammaticalization in visual-gestural languages – as far as the development from lexical to grammatical element is concerned – follows the same developmental pathways as in spoken languages. That is, the proposed pathways are modalityindependent. Besides these intriguing parallels, however, sign languages have the possibility of developing grammatical markers from manual and non-manual co-speech gestures. We will discuss various instances of grammaticalized gestures and we will also briefly address the issue of the modality-specificity of this phenomenon.
T3  - Linguistics in Potsdam - 24 
KW  - grammaticalization
KW  - sign languages
KW  - modality
KW  - gesture
KW  - non-manuals
KW  - typology
Y1  - 2006
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-10886
SN  - 978-3-939469-53-7
SN  - 1864-1857
SN  - 1616-7392
PB  - Universitätsverlag Potsdam
CY  - Potsdam
ER  - 
TY  - CHAP
A1  - Demske, Ulrike
ED  - Szczepaniak, Renata
ED  - Flick, Johanna
T1  - The grammaticalization of the definite article in German
BT  - from demonstratives to weak definites
T2  - Walking on the Grammaticalization Path of the Definite Article in German: Functional Main and Side Roads
N2  - The present paper looks into the grammaticalization of the definite article in the history of German. Starting with the well-known emergence of the definite article from a demonstrative pronoun over the course of Old High German (750–1050), I will consider the rise of so-called weak definites in Early New High German (1350–1650) as a new piece of evidence for the grammaticalization process. Here, the subclass of possessive weak definites is of particular interest for the grammaticalization of the definite article in German, because of a word order change affecting the position of possessor phrases. As soon as the possessor systematically follows the head noun (except for proper names), we observe three alternatives for the prenominal determiner slot: it may remain empty, or it may be filled either by the indefinite or the definite article in Early New High German. In Present-Day German, the definite article is used in the unmarked case, thus pointing to a second stage in the grammaticalization process of the definite article in German, which has so far not been acknowledged in the literature.
KW  - grammaticalization
KW  - definite article
KW  - weak definites
KW  - Old High German
KW  - Early New High German
KW  - Present-Day German
Y1  - 2020
SN  - 978-9-027204943
SN  - 978-9-027261564
SP  - 43
EP  - 73
PB  - John Benjamins Publishing Company
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -