Grammaticalization and Semantics of Complex Predicates in Kalmyk

The Formal Semantics of Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization is the gradual historical development of function morphemes from content morphemes. Among the commonly identified characteristics of this process is what is often called “semantic bleaching”: while becoming more and more functional the morpheme loses most of its meaning. In this paper, I ask what sense we can make of “semantic bleaching” from a formal semantic perspective. I ...

Grammaticalization, Typology, and Semantics: Expanding the Agenda

The Semantics of Gradable Predicates

Possible Worlds Semantics for Predicates

Complex Predicates in Arrernte

Using the example of Murrinh-Patha, Seiss (2011) illustrates how Australian Aboriginal languages can shed light on the morphology-syntax interface: one aspect of their polysynthetic nature is that information often encoded in phrases and clauses in other languages is instead found in a single morphological word. In this paper, we look at another instance, the Australian Aboriginal language Arre...