About this Book

The phenomenon of grammaticalization--the historical process whereby new grammatical material is created--has attracted a great deal of attention within linguistics in recent years. However, until now no attempt has been made to provide a general account of this phenomenon in terms of a formal theory of syntax. This book shows how this approach gives rise to a number of important conceptual and theoretical issues concerning the nature of functional categories and the form of parameters, as well as the relation of both of these to language change.