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On the distinction between ambiguity and vagueness in grammatical change

ORCiD logo with link | National Chengchi University
ORCiD logo with link | University of Edinburgh
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 2 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.24038.kuo
Abstract
We argue that we should maintain the distinction between ambiguity and vagueness in grammatical change, especially in usage-based linguistics, as it offers a more fine-grained perspective on types of context, change, and linguistic structure. Drawing on previous research, we present two case studies: the semantic history of be going to, and the morphosyntactic history of Mandarin modals and conditionals. These studies show that the initial relation involved in grammatical change is one of vagueness. We also contrast our usage-based perspective with that of frameworks where the clause is hierarchically organised such that the initial relation is more likely one of ambiguity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The distinction in the literature
    • 2.1Lexical semantics
    • 2.2Morphosyntax
    • 2.3Grammatical change
  • 3.Discussion: Maintaining the distinction
  • 4.Case study: Be going to
    • 4.1Previous investigation on be going to
    • 4.2Data and data collection
    • 4.3The innovation of intention
    • 4.4The innovation of prediction
  • 5.Case study: Mandarin modals and conditionals
    • 5.1Distributional and functional properties
    • 5.2The triclausal construction
    • 5.3The morphosyntactic histories of xūshì and chúfēi
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (110)
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