Grammaticalization and typology in Australian Aboriginal languages

Abstract

While grammatical change has been a key area of interest for Australian historical linguistics, only a few studies have sought to explain the development of grammar in terms of processes of grammaticalization. This chapter explores the key reasons for the relative absence of grammaticalization studies in the Australianist tradition. It then shows how the development of a particular areal feature—second-position clitic constructions—may be explained in term of both grammaticalization and constructionalization. The chapter also discusses the development of dual-pronoun systems in Australian languages, and shows that it can be reasonably assumed that erstwhile bound pronouns have developed into free pronouns, in contrast to previous research claiming the emergence of bound pronouns from free pronouns.