Meaning Change in Grammaticalization: An Enquiry into Semantic Reanalysis

This book explores the key mechanisms underlying semantic change. Meaning changes work, the author shows, through modes of reanalysis undertaken by speakers and listeners, and are particularly evident in processes of grammaticalization in which lexical items lose autonomous meaning. Regine Eckardt's approach is derived from formal semantic theory and developed in the context of several in-depth case studies. Her book will interest scholars and advanced students of historical and comparative linguistics and formal semantics.