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Semantic extension refers to the process through which one or more semantic senses within the same or another conceptual domain are added to the core semantic sense or focus of a linguistic item. Defined as such, semantic extension has a diachronic dimension, in which a single linguistic form accumulates additional senses over time. These senses are sometimes demonstrably close and are thereby regarded within cognitive semantics as cases of polysemy; other cases in which no apparent set of seman…

The term ‘semantic bleaching’ refers to loss of lexical content or categorial status of a lexical item in the course of diachronic semantic change, typically resulting from a grammaticalization process whereby certain lexical items develop into markers of grammatical relations, thus acquiring grammatical functions. This phenomenon is variously labeled ‘desemanticization’ (Lehmann 1995:127), ‘semantic weakening’ (Guimier 1985:157), ‘abstraction’ (Heine a.o. 1991:41–45; Heine 1991:155–157), ‘seman…

The term badal ‘apposition, substitution, permutative, parenthetic’ is found in the works of early medieval Arabic grammarians and continues to be used to designate the appositive noun phrase as well as those structures in which typically a pair of noun phrases – the first mubdal minhu ‘the principal noun’; the second, badal ‘the apposed noun’ – are juxtaposed (asyndetically) without an intervening overt device connecting them. Typically, these two noun phrases fulfill similar syntactic functions in any given structure and are governed equally b…

Reanalysis constitutes a major mechanism for synchronic and diachronic language change and is regarded as an indispensable catalyst for grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott 1993:32). The most elaborate study of this mechanism is found in Langacker (1977), who defines it as a “change in the structure of an expression or class of expressions that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface manifestation”. It also is defined by Timberlake (1977) as “the formulation of…

Grammaticalization (Arabic intiḥāʾ) is commonly defined, in Kuryłowiczian (1965) terms, as a gradual evolutionary process of change whereby contentive lexical units and structures acquire grammatical meanings and functions and less-grammatical forms become more grammatical. The term ‘grammaticalization’, while selected here for its widespread use and without theoretical predilections, has alternatives: ‘grammacization’ (Hopper 1991) and ‘grammatization’ (Matisoff 1991), which stand for divergent theoretical underpinnings. The term ‘grammaticalization’ is Fren…