The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 78. In the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has developed into one of the most dynamic and attractive frameworks within theoretical and descriptive linguistics The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is a major new reference that presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied. | 740 SOTERIA SVOROU involves an increase in the range of a morpheme advancing from a lexical to a grammatical or from less grammatical to more grammatical status the renewed interest in grammaticalization focused not only on the description of the morpho-syntactic changes that morphemes underwent but also on the semantic and pragmatic changes which according to several scholars precede and drive grammaticaliza-tion. A number of important publications on various grammaticalization phenomena in different languages converged in further advancing our knowledge of the process. Studies by Bybee and Pagliuca 1985 Lehmann 1985 Traugott 1982 1988 among others provided the theoretical and empirical foundations for a theory of grammaticalization with the following characteristics a. Grammaticalization is a diachronic process although it can be interpreted synchronically. b. Grammaticalization affects the morphosyntactic status of a lexical or grammatical form forms grams become phonologically eroded their position within the sentence becomes gradually more fixed and they lose in cate-goriality. c. Grammaticalization involves semantic generalization forms tend to assume more general meanings losing some of their semantic specificities while retaining the basic semantic schema. Such semantic generalization is seen as a precursor to morphosyntactic changes. d. Grammaticalization is a unidirectional process in that it leads from a less grammatical to a more grammatical unit but not vice versa. The development of adpositions from lexical sources features prominently in most of these studies. Initially however the focus was on the changes that affect their morphosyntactic character. It was not until the cross-fertilization of grammati-calization theory with metaphor theory that the semantic aspect of grammatica-lization started to become interesting. The study of metaphor as a literary device is as old as literary tradition itself. The publication of Lakoff and Johnson 1980 and .
