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In:Different Slants on Grammaticalization
Edited by Sylvie Hancil and Vittorio Tantucci
[Studies in Language Companion Series 232] 2023
► pp. 176–196

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Chapter 7
New perspectives on phonological erosion as an aspect of grammaticalization

 | The University of Texas at El Paso
Published online: 13 July 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.232.07ele
Phonological erosion as a concomitant of grammaticalization has been a prevailing assumption for four decades. Phonological erosion is, in fact, a general diachronic process with reduction occurring at the rate of about 15–20% per millennium. Reduction related to grammaticalization is often faster than the nominal rate and this has supported the standard theory. In a language, which is an adaptive and isostatic system, phonological loss, at nominal or accelerated rates, whether associated with grammaticalization or otherwise, interacts with mechanisms of compensation. Such interaction, a complex process, supports lexical right-sizing, an expression of the Quantity Principle. Phonological loss that accompanies grammaticalization, often significant and often uncompensated, is one aspect of this general diachronic process.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The loss of phonological bulk: The preliminary benchmark
  • 3.Phonological loss, compensation, and the efficiency constant
  • 4.Accelerated and uncompensated loss as an aspect of right-sizing
  • 5.Right-sizing extended to cases of grammaticalization
  • 6.Right-sizing as a complex adaptive process with stochastic effect
  • 7.Conclusions
  • References
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