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 
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 
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Different Slants on
Grammaticalization
Edited by
Sylvie Hancil
Vittorio Tantucci
   

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University of Victoria University of Erfurt
Tine Breban Elisabeth Leiss
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William A. Croft Marianne Mithun
University of New Mexico University of California, Santa Barbara
Östen Dahl Heiko Narrog
University of Stockholm Tohuku University
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University of Cologne University of Aarhus
Marianne Hundt Debra Ziegeler
University of Zurich University of Paris III
Ekkehard König
Free University of Berlin
Volume 232
Edited by Sylvie Hancil and Vittorio Tantucci
Different Slants
on Grammaticalization
Edited by
Sylvie Hancil
University of Rouen
Vittorio Tantucci
Lancaster University
John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Table of contents
Introduction 1
section i. Diachronic approaches

chapter 1. From comparative standard marker to comparative adverb:
On the contact-induced (de)grammaticalization of yori in modern
through present-day Japanese 20
Reijirou Shibasaki
chapter 2. From fear to reason: Grammaticalization as dependency vs
expansion of the Mandarin apprehensive 怕 pà 50
Vittorio Tantucci & Aiqing Wang
chapter 3. -maɾa in Mara: On the ongoing grammaticalization(s)
of a Bantu ‘finish’ verb 74
Rasmus Bernander, Antti Laine, Tim Roth & Lotta Aunio
section ii. Synchronic approaches

chapter 4. Tracking Jespersen’s cycle in Veronese and Bresciano:
Diatopic variation in sentential negation 104
Marta Tagliani & Jelena Živojinović
chapter 5. Could be, might be, maybe: Mechanisms of grammaticalization
in synchronic use and perception 124
David Lorenz
chapter 6. The final-appendage construction in Japanese and Korean:
To what extent is post-predicative position exploited in the two
East Asian languages? 147
Mitsuko Narita Izutsu, Katsunobu Izutsu & Yong-Taek Kim
chapter 7. New perspectives on phonological erosion as an aspect of
grammaticalization 176
Charles Elerick
vi Different Slants on Grammaticalization
section iii. Interactive contexts

chapter 8. On the development of discourse markers
from elliptical structures 198
Seongha Rhee
chapter 9. On the grammaticalization of ideophones 237
Alexander Andrason & Bernd Heine
chapter 10. An emerging final particle: The case of quoi ‘what’ in French 263
Sylvie Hancil
Index 283
Introduction
Vittorio Tantucci & Sylvie Hancil
University of Lancaster | University of Rouen
1. Grammaticalization: Historical background
The term ‘grammaticalization’ was presumably first formalised in 1912 by the his-
torical linguist Meillet. However, the grammatical evolution of languages was
already amply discussed in the 19th century by linguists such as Bopp (1816; 1833),
Wüllner (1831), or von der Gabelentz (1961[1891]). Grammaticalization arguably
became a recognised sub-discipline of linguistics in the 1970’s, especially with the
work of Givón, famously stating that language structure can be really understood
once one gets to know how it evolved, which was embodied by the famous expres-
sion “Today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax” (Givón 1971: 12, 1979). With a
similar ethos, key books in the field of grammaticalization were produced by
Lehmann (1995[1982]), Heine and Reh (1984), along with Traugott and Heine
(1991a, 1991b). It was perhaps with the two textbooks by Heine et al. (1991) and
Hopper and Traugott (1993) that grammaticalization was then widely recognised
as an independent field of study within linguistics. These seminal works allowed
the grammaticalization approaches to further expand into cross-linguistic and
typological studies (Bybee et al. 1994; Ramat & Hopper 1998; Fischer et al. 2000).
However, despite the growing interest towards a framework that could some-
what ‘predict’ how grammars evolve over time, poignant critiques of the theory
were made in a special issue of Language Sciences (Campbell 2001; see also
Newmeyer 1998). Others similarly cast doubt on the unidirectional hypothesis of
grammatical change – i.e. the idea that the process of linguistic items becoming
more grammatical is irreversible – starting with Ramat (1992) and culminating
in Norde (2009) (see also Haspelmath 1999; Börjars & Vincent 2011 for critical
discussions). The theory subsequently gathered new momentum with the confer-
ence series “New Reflections on Grammaticalization” (Wischer & Diewald 2002;
Fischer et al. 2004; López-Couso & Seoane 2008; Seoane & López Couso 2008;
Davidse et al. 2012; Smith et al. 2014); with the publication of key volumes such
as Bisang et al. (2004), Stathi et al. (2010), Traugott & Trousdale (2010) and Van
linden et al. (2010). Grammaticalization theories were also put into play in special
issues in Language Sciences (Norde et al. 2013), Folia Linguistica (Von Mengden
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.232.intro
© 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 Vittorio Tantucci & Sylvie Hancil
& Simon 2014), again in Language Sciences (Breban & Kranich 2015), and in
Heine & Kuteva’s book “World Lexicon of Grammaticalization” (2002), along
with Narrog & Heine’s “The Handbook of Grammaticalization” (2011).
After the turn of the century, grammaticalization also made its way into the
generative paradigm (Roberts & Roussou 2003; van Gelderen 2004) and, prepon-
derantly, in to Construction Grammar (i.a. Traugott & Trousdale 2013; Coussé
et al. 2018; Pons & Loureda 2018; Sommerer & Smirnova 2020).
Further advances into typological enquiry of language change have been made
with the edited book “Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective” (Narrog
& Heine 2018) whereby areal overviews are provided about how grammaticaliza-
tion occurs in different languages and language groups. New functional perspec-
tives on data and by-products of grammaticalization phenomena have been flagged
in edited books by Hancil & König (2014), Smith et al. (2015), van Olmen et al.
(2016) and by Hancil et al. (2018). It is also important to note the recent and in many
ways innovative textbook Grammaticalization by Narrog & Heine (2021: 1).
2. Defining grammaticalization and grammar
As the name suggests, grammaticalization involves a process in which something

becomes or is made grammatical (Lehmann 1995: 11). Another classic definition by
Hopper and Traugott (2003: 18) treats grammaticalization as the “change whereby
lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve gram-
matical functions, and once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammat-
ical functions”. More recent is Boye and Harder’s definition (2012: 21) who suggest
that “Grammaticalization is the diachronic change that gives rise to linguistic ex-
pressions that are by convention ancillary and as such discursively secondary”.
Narrog and Heine (2021: 1) take a broader stance, as they view grammaticalization
as “the development from lexical to grammatical forms and once the grammatical
form has evolved, the development of further grammatical forms”. They also em-
phasise that “since the development of grammatical forms takes place in specific
contexts and constructions, the study of grammaticalization is also concerned with
constructions and context, including even larger discourse segments” (Narrog &
Heine 2021: 1)
But what is exactly grammatical and what is not? While an answer to this
question may seem intuitive at first, in the last 30 years scholars in theoretical
and historical linguistics found it increasingly challenging to identify grammar
as a discrete category. For instance, a notoriously controversial phenomenon in
the literature is the diachronic change and formation of discourse markers (DM),
elsewhere defined as pragmatic markers (PM) (cf. Brinton 2017 for a detailed
Introduction 3
discussion). Do they undergo grammaticalization? Can they be considered as

grammatical items? Is it necessary to adopt an alternative notion for such phenom-
ena where lexical material develops into pragmatic markers, as captured by the
concept of ‘pragmaticalization’ (Erman & Kotsinass 1993; Aijmer 1997: 2)? In this
respect, a distinction is often made between so-called ‘sentence-grammatical phe-
nomena’, and ‘discourse-pragmatic phenomena’, (Günthner & Mutz 2004). Prag-
matic markers are often free from morpho-syntactic constraints such as
obligatorification (when the choice is systematically constrained, use largely oblig-
atory), paradigmaticization (small, tightly integrated paradigm), attrition (few
semantic features; oligo- or monosegmental), condensation (the item modifies
word or stem), coalescence (item is affix or even phonological feature of carrier),
fixation (item occupies a fixed slot) (e.g. Lehmann 1995: 174). It is no secret that
such view of grammar traditionally takes inflection as an important factor, as most
of these tendencies typically move in the direction of morphosyntactic and phono-
logical reduction. However, the boundary between grammar and discourse is not
always easy to draw. If the think of sentence final particles (SFP) in a number of
languages of the Southeast – such as Chinese or Thai – it is not straightforward
whether these serve an exclusively grammatical vs discursive function. On the one
hand, they underwent fixation as they are structurally bound to the end of the sen-
tence, on the other, they are often not obligatory (Tantucci & Wang 2018, 2020b).
The latter is a feature that is also shared by Chinese aspectual markers (cf. Wu
2005). SFP undoubtedly underwent paradigmaticalization, but being Chinese and
Thai isolating languages, coalecence is less applicable than what we can see for
inflectional languages such as Germanic or Romance. Have they undergone gram-
maticalization or pragmaticalization?
Diewald (2011a) suggests that pragmaticalization can be treated as a sub-
process of grammaticalization. Wischer (2000: 359) similarly proposed to tackle
pragmaticalization as ‘grammaticalization on the text or discourse level’ and
grammaticalization as ‘grammaticalization on the propositional level’. Arguably,
in both processes linguistic items undergo recategorialization (see also Hopper
on de-categorialization 1991: 22), as they change from a more open to a closer cat-
egorial system. Related to this issue, Nicolle (2011) suggests that grammaticaliza-
tion primarily underpins the addition of procedural information (e.g. Traugott &
Trousdale 2013) to the semantics of an expression. Linguistic expressions encode
procedural meaning when they “contribute information about how to combine
[…] concepts into a conceptual representation” (Terkourafi 2011: 358–359), e.g. in
indexical reference and information-structure marking (topic, definiteness, etc.),
argument-structure marking (case), marking of temporal phase (aspect) or re-
lationship to time of speaking (deictic tense). Accordingly, lexical items express
conceptual information, while discourse markers, pronouns, tense, aspect, and

modality markers contribute to procedural information.
Such controversies also reflect a theoretical reassessment of the very notion
of grammar in several paradigms over the last 30 years. Indeed, one of the most
influential publications on the typology of grammatical change was the “Evolu-
tion of Grammar” by Bybee et al. (1994), which is centred on the way languages
have a tendency towards phonological reduction and grammatical categorisation,
which in their model is embodied by the progressive formation of ‘grams’, i.e.
grammatical morphemes. This perspective does not differ from Lehmann’s strong
emphasis on grammaticalization as a primarily structural mechanism that is nec-
essarily geared towards inflectional and/or morphosyntactic reduction of linguis-
tic material. An alternative view of grammatical knowledge and sedimentation in
speakers’ mind was at the core of Construction Grammars (e.g. Langacker 1987;
Fillmore 1988; Goldberg 1995, 2006; Traugott & Trousdale 2013), according to
which lexicon and grammar are conceptually integrated, and therefore cannot be
seen as discrete categories. This is a point that was also made in Hopper (1991: 19),
when he suggested that “the only way to identify instances of grammaticization
would be in relation to a prior definition of grammar; but there appear to be
no clear ways in which the borders which separate grammatical from lexical and
other phenomena can be meaningfully and consistently drawn”.
In constructionist approaches, a grammar is stored in speaker’s memory as a
large inventory of constructions, which constitute pairs of form and meaning of
varying degrees of abstraction (which in the framework is referred to as schematic-
ity) and productivity (the degree to which a construction is open to different/new
lexical items). This means that the very schematic notion of subject-auxiliary inver-
sion [SAI] can be seen as a construction, as much as the specific expression [kick the
bucket] or the word [red]. What this entails for a theory of language change is that
linguistic items that become more grammatical are primarily ones that are concep-
tualised as procedural elements that serve linguistic functions, e.g. such as mark-
ing the phasal realisation and/or the view point (i.e. aspect) of an event (as for the
partly schematic progressive construction [BE V-ing], or the perfect one [HAVE,
V-ed]), encoding definite reference (as for the specific definite article construction
[the]) and so on. In this sense, the emphasis is not quite on the way linguistic mate-
rial becomes phonologically reduced, but more distinctively on the way it serves
general functions of language use, i.e. ones that allow speakers to ‘procedurally’
organise lexical and contentful material. In addition to procedurality, construc-
tionist models also assume that grammatical change is gradual and incremental
and leads to an increase in productivity and schematicity (e.g. Gisborne & Patten
2011; Traugott & Trousdale 2013).
Introduction 5
As pointed out in Heine (2011), a key aspect of this debate is whether maintain-
ing that schematization in constructions and grammaticalization are two different
types of change, or rather searching for an overarching theoretical framework that
encompasses both (see also Nöel 2007). This latter approach often led to the inclu-
sion of pragmatic markers and discursive functions as components of grammar,
and therefore as items that undergo grammaticalization.
3. Wide vs narrow views of grammaticalization
A distinction that ensued as a result of this debate was the one between a ‘narrow’
view in contrast with a ‘wide’ view of grammaticalization. The former is dis-
tinctively compatible with the diagnostics formulated in Lehmann (1982, 1995)
but does not include DMs/PMs (Degand & Simon-Vandenbergen 2011: 290). The
wide view takes into account DMs/PMs, as well as other forms of discourse-
oriented expressions (e.g. Traugott 1995; Brinton 2001; Barth-Weingarten &
Couper-Kuhlen 2002; Mosegaard Hansen 1998; Lenker 2000; Traugott & Dasher
2002; Brinton & Traugott 2005: 136–140; Prévost 2011; Diewald 2011a, 2011b; van
Bogaert 2011; Degand & Evers-Vermeul 2015: 67). The wide view rejects the early
notion of pragmaticalization (cf. Traugott 1995, 2007) in favour of a distinction
between two kinds of approaches, referred to as ‘GR’ (grammaticalization as re-
duction) and ‘GE’ (grammaticalization as expansion).
In GR models, grammaticalization is viewed as reduction and increase in
dependency. Examples of such approaches are Givón (1979), Heine & Reh (1984),
Heine et al. (1991), Lehmann (1995, 2004), Bybee et al. (1991), Haspelmath (2004),
and Boye & Harder (2012). While GR maintains that grammaticalization tends to
be unidirectional for the most part (but see Norde 2009 for an in-depth account
of degrammaticalization), GE may also involve ‘multidirectionality’ (Traugott &
Trousdale 2013: 108). As remarked by Haselow (2014: 210), when understood as
expansion and extra-sentential material, grammaticalization can be identified as
involving (i) semantic change from conceptual/referential to procedural mean-
ings and (ii) from truth-conditional to non-truth-conditional meanings, (iii)
decategorialization (i.e. loss of morphosyntactic properties of the source forms)
(iv) scope expansion from proposition-internal over proposition-external scope
to scope over discourse, (v) a structural change from clause/sentence-internal to
clause/sentence-external position, which often coincides with a movement to new
structural positions, typically peripheral ones, and (vi) context extension or con-
text generalization, i.e. use in an increasingly larger number of contexts (i.a. Tabor
& Traugott 1998; Traugott & Dasher 2002; Heine 2002; Auer & Günthner 2005;
Fanego 2010). Concerning this point, it is worth mentioning Heine’s (2011; 2018)
clear stance against the wide view, as he provides an alternative explanation for
the development of discourse markers. He argues that discourse markers involve
extra-clausal material and are therefore to be treated as ‘theticals’ (see Dik 1997, as
first discussed in Kaltenböck et al. 2011). Theticals can be the result of cooptation,
which, in turn, hinges on some segment of linguistic discourse being transferred
from one domain of discourse to another. Heine argues that the combination of
coopotation + grammaticalization explains the special features of the development
of discourse markers as components of the linguistic systems that should be kept
separate from grammar. This is a model that is further discussed in the book “The
rise of discourse markers” (Heine et al. 2021). In turn, a wide approach on the
same issue is also elaborated in “Discourse Structuring Markers in English: A his-
torical constructionalist perspective on pragmatics” by Elizabeth Traugott (2022).
4. Recent issues in grammaticalization theory
Grammaticalization has been a key resource in the field of typology as it shed new
light on cross-linguistic similarities among clines of change in different languages.
Whilst being first centred on the diachronic study of languages with richly doc-
umented historical data, such as English, French, Spanish, etc. (but see López-
Couso & Seoane 2008), it was with the Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization
(Heine & Narrog 2001) that grammaticalization studies were widely extended to an
increasingly diverse range of world’s languages (cf. Hancil et al. 2018). These and
other studies put new emphasis not only on the effects of grammaticalization, but
also on the motivations that trigger language change. A wide array of mechanisms
have been theorised and redefined, such as reanalysis (Harris & Campbell 1995;
Hopper & Traugott 2003), also refered to as neoanalysis (Croft 2000; Andersen
2001; Traugott & Trousdale 2013), routinization (Haiman 1994; Bybee 2010),
entrenchment (e.g. De Smet 2017; Tantucci & Di Cristofaro 2020; Schmid 2020)
analogy (Fischer 2008), ease of effort, economy, and perceptual factors (Fischer
2006), to name a few. An important pragmatic mechanism leading to grammatical
change is famously argued to be extravagance, i.e. the desire to be noticed by others,
with the corresponding effect of being over-informative in expressing grammatical
relations (Keller 1994; Haspelmath 1999; Detges & Waltereit 2002). Accommo-
dation and resonance are also treated as important pragmatic triggers of gram-
maticalization, as they involve changes that are determined by (dis-)alignment of
speech to the other interlocutors (Beuls & Steels 2013; Schwenter & Waltereit 2010;
Tantucci et al. 2018; Tantucci & Wang 2022).
A key issue that arose with the new century was the intersection between
a gradient synchronic system and grammaticalization (Aarts 2007; Traugott &
Trousdale 2011), i.e. the degree to which it is possible to infer how neo/reanalysis
Introduction 7
may have been taking place in constructions that share some semantic and mor-
phosyntactic analogies. Despite not strictly tackling grammaticalization per sé,
synchronic approaches to change were also at the heart of sociolinguistic studies
that relied on the so-called ‘apparent-time method’, taking speakers’ age cohorts
as a proxy for linguistic changes across specific timespans (Sankoff & Blondeau
2007: 582; Tagliamonte & D’Arcy 2009: 61). Synchronic was also the innovative
approach to grammaticalization developed by Croft (2007, 2010) who compared
alternative verbalizations of the same experience of speakers in a controlled sit-
uation. Examples of innovation in lexical semantic change and grammatical-
ization were examined using parallel English narratives. The results challenged
the traditional assumption that morphosyntactic innovation is rare and special
mechanisms are needed for it to occur. Instead, the study suggested that grammat-
icalization may originate in the variation that is inherent in the verbalization of
experience. New emphasis has also been given to real-time dynamics of the indi-
vidual and the community in grammaticalization (e.g. Petré & Van de Velde 2018).
Another fundamental aspect of grammaticalization which has become in-
creasingly discussed in recent years is intersubjectivity, i.e. whether grammatical-
ization involves meanings that become increasingly ‘social’, that is ones that are
increasingly centred on the addressee’s – or a specific/generic 3rd party’s – po-
tential reactions to what is being said (Tantucci 2021). While several definitions
of the notion of intersubjectivity have been proposed in the literature (e.g. Lan-
gacker 1991; Traugott & Dasher 2002; Traugott 2003; Verhagen 2005; Nuyts 2012;
Tantucci 2015, 2017a), the most influential approach to intersubjectification as a
diachronic phenomenon has probably been the one by Traugott (2013: 124) who
sees it as “the development of meanings that encode speaker/writer’s attention to
the cognitive stances and social identities of addressees” (Traugott 2003: 124). Po-
tential intersections between intersubjectification, grammaticalization and unidi-
rectional change have been at the core of dedicated volumes by Ghesquière et al.
(2012) and Van Olmen et al. (2016).
Another growing area of interest in broad approaches to grammaticalization
hinges on semantic-pragmatic analogies between language change and language
acquisition (e.g. Ellis & Larsen-Freeman 2006; Hengeveld 2011; Tantucci 2017b,
2020; Wei 2002). While phonological reduction and morphosyntactic erosion are
controversial diagnostics for comparing diachronic and ontogenetic change (but
see some notable exceptions in Diessel 2011), however remarkable similarities
have been noted for unidirectional patterns of semantic-pragmatic reanalysis, as
in both cases similar adaptive behaviours at play (Givón 2009). This has been
tackled in particular with respect to joint attention (Ziegeler 1997; Diessel 2006)
and semantic-pragmatic shifts from the awareness of one specific mind to the con-
ceptualisation of social meanings, i.e. from immediate to extended intersubjectiv-
ity (Tantucci 2021b; Tantucci & Wang 2020; Tantucci & Di Cristofaro 2021). The
research strands centred on intersubjectivity also led to a new dialogic turn in

grammaticalization studies, whereby language change is addressed as a joint activ-
ity among interlocutors where structural and semantic-pragmatic reanalysis are
triggered by both interlocutors in interaction (e.g. Haselow 2014, 2015; Haselow &
Hancil 2018; Tantucci et al. 2018).
5. The present volume
The present issue advances the theory and enriches the afore-mentioned debates
in different ways. The notion of linguistic gradience is reflected in the synchronic
approach of Marta Tagliani and Jelena Živojinović’s paper, which is centred on
Jespersen’s cycle of grammaticalization of negative systems. Languages with exclu-
sive preverbal negative markers (Stage I) often first get through a stage of dis-
continuous negation (Stage II), where the preverbal negative marker appears
together with a postverbal negative element (cf. van der Auwera 2009 for a differ-
ent account). Finally, the original preverbal marker disappears (Stage III), and the
postverbal element conveys alone the negative semantic meaning to the sentence.
This trend is confirmed by Tagliani and Živojinović with a diatopic-variational
study on expressions of sentential negation in two Italo-Romance varieties, i.e.,
Bresciano and Veronese. In the Veronese peripheral data, the particle mia (local
form of mica) functions as a reinforcing negative element, whereas central Bres-
ciano shows a homogeneous pattern of post-verbal negation. Finally, in Lumez-
zanese the negative particle mia appears to be completely grammaticalized.
Another synchronic approach to diachronic change is the one by David Lorenz,
as he focuses on epistemic phrases such as (it) could/might be (that) in English as
potential candidates for grammaticalizing into sentence adverb(ial)s. The aim is to
check whether reduced forms (i.e. ones with it-omission) are preferred in poten-
tially grammaticalizing contexts, e.g. when modifying a main clause ((it) could be
this is correct). Indeed, corpus data from this study suggests that it-omissions are
found in critical context across items (could be, might be) and register (spoken, in-
formal writing). A ‘continuous shadowing’ experiment also partly confirms this,
but at the same time shows some item-specific variation. What this indicates is that
grammaticalizing contexts have an immediate effect on formal reduction and that
language users have an active intuition for emerging or potential variational pat-
terns.
Vittorio Tantucci and Aiqing Wang provide the case study of the Mandarin
apprehensive verb 怕 pà ‘to be afraid’, which developed a new epistemic meaning
‘to believe, to conclude that’. Apprehensives (e.g. Jing-Schmidt & Kapatsinski
2012) are known to shift diachronically from meanings of fear to ones of reason
Introduction 9
and have been observed in a number of languages, including the English con-
struction I am afraid (Leech 1983; Palmer 2001). The paper provides corpus-data
and a mixed effects logistic regression analysis showing that the transition from
fear to reason in Chinese involves grammaticalization as increased dependency
for constructions such as 不怕 bù pà ‘no fear’ > ‘although’ and 只怕 zhǐ pà ‘only
fear’ > ’probably’. However, it also leads to grammaticalization as expansion, such
is the case of 恐怕 kǒng pà ‘to be afraid’ > ‘to conclude that’. This supports the
view that grammaticalization is not necessarily bound to increased reduction and
dependency, but can be at work also as a mechanism of functional expansion and
heterosemy (Lichtenberk 1991), even along the same cline of change, such is the
one involving the same source (fear) and target (reason) domains of reanalysis.
Reijirou Shibasaki’s paper also contributes to typological debates on gram-
maticalization as expansion (under the so-called broad view) as it discusses the
change of the Japanese ablative marker yori, turning in to a comparative standard
marker ‘than’ first and a comparative adverb ‘more’. Crucially, the progress of
grammaticalization of yori appears as distinctively slow. Shibasaki suggests that
this may be because functional expansion from a comparative standard marker
to a comparative adverb is an unusual case in grammaticalization, and some col-
locational expressions may have partly impeded the development of yori becom-
ing adverbial. Language contact with Western Languages is also a potential trigger
of grammaticalization as intellectuals in the Meiji period dealt consciously with
such differences in morphosyntactic structures between Japanese and western
languages, giving rise to the newer comparative adverbial usage of yori, presum-
ably facilitated not by the speakers’ un intended use of it but by their ‘intended’
learning of it. Another aspect of the study is that one collocational sequence yori
issoo seems to have boosted the functional expansion of yori from a comparative
standard (ablative) marker to a comparative adverb. This endorses the view that
grammaticalization can be witnessed or facilitated in sequences of elements, but
not in isolation (Traugott 2003; Himmelmann 2004). Lastly, Shibasaki points out
that expansion as coexistence of ablative and adverbial usages at one synchronic
stage is a good case of ‘layering’ (Hopper 1991), assisted by language contact.
Mitsuko Narita Izutsu, Katsunobu Izutsu and Yong-Taek Kim provide a com-
parative analysis of parallel texts of Japanese novels and their Korean translations.
They argue that the two languages, despite both being predicate final, differ in
the exploitability of post-predicative positions. Korean’s clause-internal elements
are less likely to occur after the predicate. The study yet shows a relatively higher
proportion of vocative phrases in post-predicative position. In contrast, Japan-
ese exhibits a relatively higher degree of constructional entrenchment of final-
appendage structures. This entails that the post-predicative position in Korean is
rather restrictive, i.e. comparatively more limited to clause-external elements than

to clause-internal ones.
Seongha Rhee’s paper similarly contributes to the broad/narrow debate as it is
centred on a set of Korean DMs that arose from elliptical structures (EDMs), i.e
ones characterised by the accusative case-marker or adnominalizer being still part
of the construction. Such morphological markers would normally require the con-
struct to occur in the theme-argument position or pre-nominal modifier position,
EDMs have been through a process of expansion as they occur at non-licensed
positions or even stand alone. They carry diverse functions across the interaction-,
information and interlocutor-management domains, e.g. the speaker’s feigned sur-
prise, discontent, challenge/protest, disregard, and so on. Rhee suggests that the
development of these new affective and attitudinal functions are triggered by
structural ellipsis, whereby the speaker is unable to complete the utterance as
s/he is overwhelmed by the event or state of affairs that is being talked about.
This change is accompanied with semantic generalization, whereby the scope is
extended. This leads EDMs to move out of the licensed position and acquire new
syntagmatic freedom. Interestingly, such DM function is not exclusively derivable
from the source lexemes but also from structural changes (i.e. ellipsis). Something
that sets EDMs apart from morphosyntactic, semantic, phonological, and prag-
matic aspects typical of Discourse markers is also that they are often correlated
with quite specific prosodies. Finally, Rhee identifies an important role of deixis
and interrogatives in the source forms since they create indexicality and vagueness
as important triggers of the constructs as EDMs.
Alexander Andrason and Bernd Heine provide a compelling paper on ideo-
phones, like English bang or thud. These are defined as interactive expressions
used as vivid depictions of sensory imagery of states, events, objects, or qualities
(cf. Dingemanse 2011, 2012, 2018; Dingemanse & Akita 2017; Andrason 2020,
2021). Ideophones are considered as a universal, typologically valid class of lin-
guistic forms. While in European languages they may be limited, in others, such as
Korean, Japanese and Basque, they may be as large as nouns and verbs (see Dinge-
manse 2018; Haiman 2018). Ideophones have been described as grammatical
forms that are syntactically unattached and prosodically set off from surrounding
text material. At the same time, they have also been treated as morphosyntacti-
cally integrated adverbials, verbals, or nominals in a number of languages. An-
drason and Heine look at ideophones from the perspective of grammaticalization
theory and provide a thought-provoking discussion about their ambivalent be-
haviour.
An important contribution to dialogic and interactional approaches to gram-
maticalization is the one by Sylvie Hancil, as she discusses turn-taking as one of
the key factors of innovative language use. In her paper, she looks at the rela-
Introduction 11
tionship between the emergence of grammatical patterns and intersubjectivity in

sentence final position, in particular, she focuses on the change of final quoi in
French. Final particles are a decisive category of linguistic expressions for the
development of an interactional grammar. After reviewing the various meanings
of final quoi in French dictionaries, she tests Hoppers’ (1991) five principles of
grammaticalization, namely layering, divergence, specialization, persistence and
decategorization and argues that the evolution of the particle cannot be restricted
to a grammaticalization process.
Rasmus Bernander, Antti Laine, Tim Roth and Lotta Aunio’s paper accounts
for the grammaticalization of two auxiliary verb constructions (AVCs) based on
the verb -maɾa ‘finish’ marking the two phasal polarity concepts translatable as
already and not yet in the Western Serengeti language varieties of Mara Bantu.
The two forms, despite being aspectually related seem occur in very different con-
structional frames and involve different historical backgrounds. The authors sug-
gest that, although they share a joint paradigm or semantic space, their functions
went through separate clines of change. These differences aside, both forms are
analysed as being part of a type of recurrent linguistic cycle in Eastern Bantu. Verb
forms that originally served to mark the concepts of with aspectual meanings sim-
ilar to already and not yet developed other functional qualities, or even entered
into oblivion.
Finally, Charles Elerick’s study is focused on phonological erosion, a well-
known concomitant of grammaticalization. However, he suggests that accelerated
reduction of phonological bulk is a more general diachronic phenomenon and can
happen also in absence of grammaticalization per sé. Similarly, he notes that there
are also instances of grammaticalization that do not involve significant phonolog-
ical reduction. The latter is often offset by various mechanisms of rebulking. He
argues that rightsizing is a key factor of rebulking phenomena. Right-sizing is an
expression of Givón’s Quantity Principle (1990), which indicates that “less pre-
dictable information will be given more coding material” (Givón 1995: 49). Under
the view of language as an adaptive and isostatic system, phonological loss interacts
with mechanisms of compensation with or without grammaticalization. Elerick
argues that phonological erosion that accompanies grammaticalization occurs as
just one aspect of this diachronic process.
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section i
Diachronic approaches
chapter 1
From comparative standard marker

to comparative adverb
On the contact-induced (de)grammaticalization
of yori in modern through present-day Japanese
Reijirou Shibasaki
Meiji University
This study investigates the grammaticalization of the Japanese ablative

marker yori ‘from’ into a comparative standard marker ‘than’ and further
into a comparative adverb yori ‘more.’ It is widely known that ablative mark-
ers can be grammaticalized into comparative standard markers. However,
little is known about the direction of change from comparative marker to
comparative adverb. This study takes a corpus-based approach to uncover
the process of change. The ablative yori, which had been used since Old
Japanese, began to take on the adverbial property ‘more’ in the early twenti-
eth century. While some collocational sequences facilitate the grammatical-
ization of yori, the overall degree of change turns out to be very slow.
Keywords: ablative markers, comparative standard markers, comparative

adverbs, extravagance, language contact in Japanese,
(de)grammaticalization, debonding, persistence
1. Introduction
This study investigates the process of grammaticalization of the Japanese ablative

marker yori ‘from’ into a comparative standard marker ‘than’ and the subsequent
degrammaticalization into a comparative adverb yori ‘more.’ The following are
examples from Present-Day Japanese (PDJ, hereafter). The corpora used for this
study are introduced in Section 4. Note that examples from Showa Speech Corpus
(SSC), Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ) and Balanced Corpus of Contem-
porary Written Japanese (BCCWJ) are presented with its own sample ID number
before the name of the corpus. From here onward elements in focus are under-
lined and yori is glossed according to the context in which it appears.
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.232.01shi
© 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company
Chapter 1. From comparative standard marker to comparative adverb 21
(1) Ablative usage

Kyoo-wa takoo-yori ki-te-morat.ta
today-top another.school-from come-and-receive.perf
Asura-kun-to katari-at-te-mitai to-omoi-masu.
personal.name-Mr.-with talk-meet-and-want quot-think-pol
‘Today, (we) would like to talk with Asura (coming) from another school.’
(2002 Asurahiko no aoitori; PB29_00541; BCCWJ)
(2) Comparative standard marker usage
Kyoo-no o.tenki-wa kinoo-yori yoi-yoo.desu-ne.
today-gen pol.weather-top yesterday-than good-appearance.cop (pol)-fp
‘(It) seems (that) Today’s weather is better than Yesterday’s.’
(2008 Yahoo Blog; OY13_06040; BCCWJ)
(3) Comparative adverb usage
Korera-no an-ga yori yoi mono to-naru-yoo,
these-gen proposal-nom more good thing pt-become-purp
mina-san-no iken-o boshuu.shi-masu.
everyone-Mr./Ms.-gen opinion-acc application.do-cop.pol
‘(In order) to make these proposals better, (we) invite (public) opinions (about
these).’ (2008 A PR magazine; OP75_00001; BCCWJ)
In (1), yori follows takoo ‘another school’ to indicate a source of information in a

typical usage of an ablative marker; in this usage, yori often occurs with motion
verbs such as iku ‘to go’ and kuru ‘to come.’ In (2), yori serves as a compara-
tive standard marker with its preceding word kinoo ‘yesterday.’ In this usage, the
speaker’s or writer’s evaluation is reflected in the predicate, as in yoi ‘be good.’
In (3), yori is used as a comparative adverb that modifies the following yoi ‘be
good.’ Note that in (1) and (2), yori is attached as a case-marker onto the preced-
ing words, takoo ‘another school’ and kinoo ‘yesterday,’ while in (3), yori is used as
an independent word to modify the following adjective yoi ‘be good.’ That is, yori
exhibits a layering of these three usages in PDJ.
Further, both ablative and adverbial yori can be used together, as shown in (4).
(4) Ryuudoo.hiritsu-yori yori kibishiku mita hojo.shihyoo
fluidity.ratio-than more strict see.adn subsidiary.index
to-i-eru-de-shoo.
quot-say-can-cop-infr
‘(It) can be said that (it) is (a kind of ) stricter additional index than liquidity
ratio.’ (2004 Hontoo ni dekiru shikin chootatsu; PB43_00708; BCCWJ)
The following example shows that the adverbial yori forms a compound with
another adverbial issoo ‘further.’
22 Reijirou Shibasaki
(5) shienkin-yori yori issoo juuyoo-na-no-wa

financial.backing-than more further important-cop.adn-nml-top
senryaku.teki-shien-da.
strategic-support-cop.npst
‘What is even more important than financial backing is (to provide) strategic
support.’ (2008 Yahoo Blog; OY04_05267; BCCWJ)
Arguably, Hida and Asada (2018: 587–588) make an entry for yori-issoo ‘further-
more’ in their list of adverbial expressions in PDJ, which may lend support to
the view that yori has been adverbialized enough in PDJ to be compounded with
other elements (see Section 5.3 for related discussions).1
It is widely known that ablative markers can be grammaticalized into com-
parative standard markers (e.g., Stassen 1985: 39–45; Kuteva et al. 2019: 36–37);
however, little is known about the direction of change from comparative standard
marker to comparative adverb even in the framework of degrammaticalization.
The whole issue is thus central to the current study.
This paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, the history of yori is briefly
explained. In Section 3, some preceding research closely related to the current
study is introduced. Section 4 introduces the corpora used for this study. Section 5
provides the results of corpus-based surveys, each of which is discussed in terms
of grammaticalization and degrammaticalization in connection with language
contact. Section 6 is the conclusion of the study.
2. A short history of yori
The element in focus here, i.e., yori, has been used since Old Japanese (OJ, here-
after). Nakata et al. (1983: 1720) summarize the functions of yori in OJ as follows.
Translations are all by the current author, with the addition of possible corre-
sponding expressions in English. Note that in as early as OJ, the ablative yori had
already been polyfunctional in serving as a comparative standard marker as in
(6e). See Stassen (1985) and Kuteva et al. (2019) mentioned above.
(6) yori (ablative)
a. a spatio-temporal starting point for activity, from
b. a position along the way, by way of, through
c. denoting an action, by means of, by
d. denoting a range of action, from … to/until…
e. denoting a comparative standard marker, than (Nakata et al. 1983: 1720)
1. In addition to these usages, yori can be used as an (almost) lexicalized expression yori-hoka-
nai (from-other-not) ‘(there is) no choice (but to do something).’ See Hida & Asada (2018: 587)
for other lexicalized or collocational expressions.
Nakata et al. (1983: 1720–1721) go on to explain that in OJ, there were three other
expressions synonymous with yori: yo, yuri, and yu. While potential derivational
processes (e.g., from yo to yori and from yu to yuri) or possible directions of
change (e.g., from yori to yo and from yuri to yu) are still open to debate, the fact
that only yo and yori are found to have served as comparative standard markers
(p.1721) is worth mentioning. However, even these two forms were extremely rare
in OJ. On the other hand, the other ablative marker, kara ‘from,’ began to gain an
increasing share of the usages in (6a) and (6b) from OJ onward, while the usage
in (6c) has become fossilized in a limited set of expressions, such as kachi-yori
‘on foot (lit. ‘by foot’),’ according to Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (2006, Vol.13: 704;
Nikkoku, hereafter). As a result, yori began to be used exclusively as a compara-
tive standard marker from that time onward (ibid.).2
The comparative adverbial yori is considered to have appeared around the
turn of the twentieth century. The earliest example cited in Nikkoku (2006) is
shown in (7), which means that yori has developed its adverbial usage over the
twentieth century.
(7) Meiji-no shichoo-ni yori shokuchaku-su-beki-hazu-no
Meiji.period-gen trend-to more direct.contact-do-should-supposed.to-gen
chuutoo-shakai-o utsusu-nimo nao sukoburu sohon-de-aru.
middle-class-acc copy-even.if still deeply crude-cop-exist
‘Even if (it) describes (people of ) the middle class who are supposed to be
more trend-conscious during the Meiji period, (it) is still rough around the
edges.’
(1899 Shakuhyoo Reigo; Nikkoku Vol.13, s.v. yori adv.)
Shibasaki (in press) examined five dictionaries of Japanese published from 1899
to 1912, and found that one dictionary, called Daijiten Ge (An unabridged dictio-
nary, Vol.2, 1912), offers an explanation for the potential adverbial usage of yori in
which yori is interpreted as corresponding to than or ‑er in English, originating in
the translation of English into Japanese. Although the dictionary does not provide
any crucial or actual example, it seems that in the early twentieth century, some
speakers of Japanese might have realized the functional expansion of yori from a
comparative standard marker (i.e., than) to a comparative adverb (i.e., more).3
2. Nikkoku (2006, Vol.13: 704) adds a note that among the four synonymous expressions, i.e.,
yori, yo, yuri, and yu, yori was by far the most frequently used form with a wider range of func-
tions, as in (6).
3. Sansom (1928: 252–254) shows some examples with yori of those days; however, he makes
no mention of the adverbial yori. Presumably, the adverbial yori was so infrequent in the early
twentieth century that it might not have fallen under researchers’ notice.
3. Preceding studies on yori and language contact
In this section, I refer mainly to the following two studies published in Japan, i.e.,
Hida (1992, 2019) and Morioka (1999), each of which is directly related to the pre-
sent research (Section 3.1). After that, I briefly introduce some influential studies
on language contact issues in a cross-linguistic context (Section 3.2).
3.1 Preceding studies on yori
3.1.1 Hida (1992, 2019)

Hida (1992, 2019) examines a variety of English reference grammar books and
their translated versions published in the early Meiji period and arrives at the con-
clusion that the adverbial yori was derived from the translation of English into
Japanese. In what follows, I give an account of how Hida (1992) deciphers such a
mysterious process of change from a comparative standard marker to a compara-
tive adverb.
The illustration in (8) is as faithful as possible to Hida’s (1992) illustration of
the example. In (8), the line just above the original example stands for either gloss-
ing or grammatical relations in the original grammar books, while the line below
the example gives a supplementary explanation, e.g., 人名 ‘personal name.’ The
corresponding (9) is an English translation of the original (8). In (10), the English
elements in focus, i.e., the comparative expressions, are relocated following a typ-
ical word order of Japanese.
(8) ガアル長ケ高クガアルヨリ高ク然シナガラガアル最モ高ク
John is tall, James is taller, but George is the tallest.
人名人名人名
(Hida 1992:475)
(9) nom be tall nom be yori.tall but nom be
John is tall, James is taller, but George is
personal.name personal.name personal.name
(the).most.tall
the tallest.
‘John is tall, James is taller, but George is the tallest.’
(10)
(based on Hida 1992: 475)

In the verbatim translation, yori seems to be used to indicate the comparative

inflection of the adjective in (8), where yori does not carry the potential standard,
John. In fact, relevant examples from English reference grammars cited in
Morioka (1999) and Yagishita (2018) are similar in this respect. That is, yori is
illustrated as a comparative adverb. Hida (2019: 191) thus argues that language
learners in the Meiji period (e.g., college-bound youngsters and intellectuals)
memorized these examples and their parallel translations faithfully and keenly,
resulting in the emergence of the comparative adverb yori.4 Contact with western
languages, especially English, is considered to have acted as a trigger for the
reanalysis of the ablative comparative standard marker to the comparative
adverb.5 Considering the fact that Japanese is a verb-final language, the reanalysis
of X-yori (‘than X’) as yori Y (‘more Y (than X)’), as Hida (1992) argues, seems to
be a man-made change caused by language contact.
In more contemporary Japanese, yori can indisputably be used as a compara-
tive adverb, but it seems to still be regarded as a comparative standard marker in
typological studies. For example, Payne (1997: 89) refers to the following Japanese
example in order to show the sequential relation of standard, marker and quality
in a comparative construction. Note that one typographical error in the original
has been corrected by the present author (i.e., meko > neko).
(11) Japanese: standard-marker-quality
Inu ga neko yori ookii.
dog nom cat than big
std mkr qual
‘The dog is bigger than the cat.’ (Payne 1997: 89)
4. Hida (2019: 191) notes that before the emergence of the comparative adverbial yori, Japanese
had a bipartite system of positive and superlative forms. As one anonymous reviewer points
out, there are some degree (but not comparative) adverbs such as sarani ‘additionally’, issoo ‘all
the more’, nafo ‘still, more’, and harukani ‘(by) far’, some of which were used before the Meiji
period. I am grateful to the reviewer for this point. Hida (2019) does not mention them; how-
ever, what he means there, presumably, is that those adverbs have not been used as comparative
adverbs as shown in (11). In fact, the Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ) does not provide any
crucial examples before the Meiji period in which those adverbs were used in the comparative
construction. I will take this issue for my future study.
5. It should be mentioned that Sugimoto (1983: 232–242) notes the Dutch influence on the
emergence of the comparative adverb yori in the Edo period, e.g., kleiner (klein-er [small-
COMP]) ‘smaller’ > yori chiisai (er-klein] ‘smaller.’ Worth noting here is that both Hida (1992,
2019) and Sugimoto (1983) attribute a significant part of the rise of the comparative yori to lan-
guage contact, specifically translation of western languages, either English or Dutch, into Japan-
ese. Also see Shibasaki (2021) on this issue.
In (11), yori is used as a comparative marker with its standard, neko ‘cat’: this yori
is an ablative case-marker. The subject of the clause, inu ‘dog,’ is compared against
the standard, neko ‘cat,’ in terms of the quality ookii ‘be big.’ On the other hand, if
neko ‘cat’ is informationally active in the immediate discourse, it is omissible, as
in (12): yori is automatically interpreted as a comparative adverb, because it is now
bifunctional in the comparative construction.
(12) Inu ga yori ookii.
dog nom more big
com.adv qual
‘The dog is bigger.’
3.1.2 Morioka (1999)

Morioka (1999) pays attention to the following points: (1) a widely used English
reader of those days, i.e., New National Fourth and Fifth Reader (1886–1907), and
its Japanese translations (Reader translation); (2) wording in Japanese literature in
both the Meiji and the Taisho periods (Japanese own wording), and (3) Japanese
translation works from western languages (Literature translation). His observation
is that yori served as a comparative adverb especially when translators added other
adverbs such as issoo ‘further’ and sarani ‘moreover’ to lay emphasis on the com-
parative meaning of yori. In other words, these sequential forms are considered to
be collocational, although he makes no reference to such technical terms.
Here are some examples from Reader translation.
(13) Reader translation
a. Original: it was noisier than ever.
(New National Fourth and Fifth Reader 1886–1907)
b. Trans 1:
sore-ga katsute-yori nao sawagashiku-arishi.
that-nom formerly-than more be.noisy-exist.pst
(Trans by Yutaka Shimada in the 1888 edition)
c. Trans 2:
sore-wa mae-yori-wa issoo sawagashiku-ariki.
that-top once-than-top further be.noisy-exist.pst
(Trans by Frederick W. Eastlake and Seiichiro Mayama in the 1902 edition)
(Morioka 1999: 199)
In (13), the original English expression it was noisier than ever is translated into
Japanese in two ways, as in (13b) and (13c). In both translations, yori remains the
ablative, as connected by a dash to the preceding comparative standards, although
it occurs with the following adverbs to emphasize the whole comparative mean-
ings. Morioka (1999: 200) thus states that these formulaic sequences were created
when intellectuals in these periods were sharply conscious of and struggled with
translations of the comparative constructions in western languages (see also 6),
gradually giving rise to the comparative adverb yori, as in (14).
(14) Reader translation
a. Original: The sun rose higher and higher,…
(New National Fourth and Fifth Reader 1886–1907)
b. Trans 1:
Hi-ga masu-masu takaku nobori-shi…
sun-nom more-more high(ly) rise-pst
(Trans by Yutaka Shimada in the 1888 edition)
c. Trans 2:
Taiyoo-ga dan-dan takaku nobori-shi
sun-nom step-step high(ly) rise-pst
(Trans by Masao Wada in the 1900 edition)
d. Trans 3:
Taiyoo-wa yori takaku yori takaku nobori-ki
sun-nom more high(ly) more high(ly) rise-pst
(Trans by Frederick W. Eastlake and Seiichiro Mayama in the 1902 edition)
(Morioka 1999: 200)
In (14), the comparative expression, i.e., higher and higher, is translated differently
by using masu-masu ‘more and more,’ dan-dan ‘step by step’ and yori ‘more.’ It is
true that these adverbs are subtly different in meaning from each other; however,
these translations mirror the emergence of comparative adverbial forms including
yori in these periods.
It is important to note here that the comparative adverb yori was still in the
early stages of its grammaticalization from the ablative case-marker (compara-
tive standard marker) to the comparative adverb. Because of this, Morioka (1999)
seems to include examples of both ablative and comparative adverbial usages,
which succeeds in reflecting a layering of yori in these synchronic stages.
Typically, linguistic elements are grammaticalized not without constraint but
in particular sequential relationships in discourse (Traugott 2003: 624). In this
respect, the sequential expressions with the comparative standard marker yori
pointed out by Morioka (1999) are worthy of consideration. See Table 1.
6. It should be mentioned that Sugimoto (1983: 232–242) notes the Dutch influence on the
emergence of the comparative adverb yori in the Edo period, e.g., kleiner (klein-er [small-
COMP]) ‘smaller’ > yori chiisai (er-klein] ‘smaller.’ Worth noting here is that both Hida (1992,
2019) and Sugimoto (1983) attribute a significant part of the rise of the comparative yori to lan-
guage contact, specifically translation of western languages, either English or Dutch, into Japan-
ese. Also see Shibasaki (2021) on this issue.
Table 1. Collocational patterns with the comparative marker yori (based on Morioka 1999)
Comp standard X Particle Adverb 1 Adverb 2 Adverb 3
plus
comp marker yori
X yori ‘than X’ Ø nao ‘more’
masu-masu ‘more and more’
yohodo ‘exceptionally’
issoo ‘further’
mata ‘besides’ issoo ‘further’ ito ‘very’
wa (top) issoo ‘further’
ooku ‘much’
sarani ‘moreover’ hito-shio ‘even
more’
mo nao ‘more’
(emph) hito-shio ‘even more’
ichi-bai ‘extra’ (lit. one-double)
haruka-ni ‘far’ (ni = adverbial
particle)
sarani ‘moreover’
issoo-ni ‘further’
hanahadashiku ‘exceedingly’
It is surprising that there were/are such a large array of collocational sequences

with yori, although some of these sequential forms are rarely observed in PDJ,
e.g., X yori mo hito-shio (yasashii) ‘even much (kind)er than X’ and X yori mata
issoo ito (kurusii) ‘even much further more (difficult) than X.’ On the other hand,
the types of the comparative adverbial usages in Morioka (1999) are only those in
(14). Presumably, as yori has been adverbialized, it has become semantically gen-
eral enough to take the place of many of the adverbial expressions given in Table 1,
which has not (just) been bleached in meaning but may have served to cover a
wide range of meanings that used to be expressed by other sequential forms in
Table 1, depending on the given context (see Bisang (2020) and Xing (2015, 2020)
for the proposal of ‘semantic accretion’ in Mainland Asian languages).
To sum up, Hida (1992, 2019), Morioka (1999) and the others mentioned else-
where in this section all make a convincing case for understanding one type of
contact-induced grammaticalization. Specifically, what they uncovered on the ini-
tial step in this particular grammaticalization deserves mention. Building on their
pioneering works, this study takes a larger view from which to investigate how
and to what extent yori has been grammaticalized over the twentieth century to
the present, which I believe can provide a supplementary explanation to their
research.
3.2 Language contact research on Japanese
Language contact issues have drawn renewed attention from a wider range of
researchers. For example, one can readily witness such huge thematic volumes
on language contact as Adamou and Matras (2020), Grant (2020), and Hickey
(2020), the last of which, by a curious coincidence, was revised and published in
the same year. Further, some earlier works should also be addressed. Weinreich
(1953: 42) introduces the idea of the Indo-Europeanization of Hebrew, showing the
emerging preferred form of a new possessive (i.e., ha-bait šel-xa ‘the-house of-
you’) over the erstwhile possessive suffixation (i.e., bet-xa ‘house-your’). Muysken
(2000: 139) reports that noun phrases are most likely to be borrowed through lan-
guage contact, illustrating some Dutch elements found in Sranan, the English-
based creole of Surinam on the northeastern coast of South America, while Clyne
(2003: 76–79) classifies transferrable elements in language contact, e.g., lexical
transference, phonological transference, prosodic transference, semantic transfer-
ence, etc. between English and its immigrant languages.
Despite the increasing trend in language contact research, reference to Japan-
ese seems to be limited. For example, Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 32, 79–80)
just touch on the adaptation of Chinese and English loanwords in Japanese, and
Hickey (2010: 173–174) introduces a handful of loanwords, such as sweater in Eng-
lish to se(e)ta(a) in Japanese. Although Heine and Kuteva (2005) pay attention to
either intensive or extensive contact between languages, Japanese is not included
in their index. While there are other excellent studies, whether modest or large
in scale, on language contact in Japan (e.g., Ishiwata (1986) and Loveday (1996)
from a sociolinguistic perspective, Yanabu (2004) and the studies addressed in
Section 3.1 on the translation effect of western languages on the creation of Mod-
ern Japanese expressions), any in-depth study of translation effects on the renewal
of former linguistic elements from a (de)grammaticalization perspective has not
been reported. This study thus takes a corpus-based quantitative approach to give
a qualitative survey of the (de)grammaticalization of yori.
4. Corpora
The corpora used for this study are as follows, summarized in (15). As shown
in (7) in Section 2, Nikkoku (2006) provides the earliest example of the com-
parative adverbial yori from the very end of the nineteenth century. Therefore, I
chose the Taiyo Corpus (Taiyo, hereafter) to examine the degree of gradualness
of this particular functional expansion. In addition, I made the Aozora Corpus
(Aozora, hereafter) because the 1930s–1940s are not sufficiently covered by exist-
ing corpora and these synchronic stages can be thought to provide examples for
understanding some crucial directions of change.7 The Showa Speech Corpus
(SSC, hereafter; see Maruyama 2020) and the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese
(CSJ, hereafter) are spoken-based corpora that cover the second half of the twen-
tieth century. The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ)
is used to give supplemental surveys in Sections 5.2.2 and 5.3 as well as to collect
relevant examples as shown in Section 1.
(15) a. Taiyo Corpus (Taiyo, 1895, 1901, 1909, 1917, 1925)
b. Aozora Corpus (Aozora, 1930s–1940s)
c. Showa Speech Corpus (SSC, 1950s–1970s)
d. Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ, 2000s)
e. Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ, 1976–2008)
5. Survey results and discussion
To begin with, I explain some coding properties in the use of the corpora intro-
duced in Section 4. From all the examples of yori in Taiyo and CSJ, I randomly
sampled 500 examples of each and manually removed irrelevant examples, such
as tayori ‘news, hearing from someone,’ and niyori ‘by means of.’ The examples
of yori in SSC turned out not to be evenly distributed across the periods; there-
fore, I divided the examples retrieved into those in the 1950s and those in the
1960s–1970s. CSJ is used to figure out the current changing situation of yori in the
2000s, which is expected to show the gradual and continual change in the func-
tion of yori in these spoken registers. For the sake of explanation, I will use the
term grammaticalization until Section 5.4 instead of degrammaticalization, which
is discussed in Section 5.5.
7. The Aozora corpus consists of approximately 772, 341 letters. The following are the texts
that constitute the self-made corpus: Goshiki Onsen Sukī Nikki (1930), Joryūhaiku o Midokusu
(1932), Hiruberuto Hōmonki (1932), Ginga tetsudō no Yoru (1934), Shumitoshiteno Dokusho
(1935), Yukiguni (1937), Kaze Tachinu (1938), Robō no Ishi (1940), Sangetsuki (1941), Yakeato no
Iesu (1946), Binbō Monogatari (1947), and Daigaku to Sono Sōchō (1948).
5.1 Gradualness of grammaticalization
Table 2 shows a broad overview of the functional expansion of yori from ablative
case-marker to comparative adverb. Numbers represent raw frequencies in each
stage, with the addition of percentages based on relative frequency. For example,
88 (96.7%) and 3 (3.3%) in the 1930s column mean that the ablative yori shares
96.7% of all the occurrences, while the comparative adverb shares 3.3%.
Table 2. The pace of change in the grammaticalization of yori: An overview

Taiyo Aozora SSC CSJ
1895–1909 1917–1925 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s–1970s 2000s
yori 390 105 88 92 181 73 (89.0%) 316
(ablative) (100%) (97.2%) (96.7%) (96.8%) (96.8%) (82.1%)
yori 0 (0) 3 (2.8%) 3 3 6 9 (11.0%) 69
(adverb) (3.3%) (3.2%) (3.2%) (17.9%)
Overall, the speed of progress of this particular grammaticalization appears to be

slow. While yori has been adverbialized almost steadily over the twentieth century,
only about 18% of the total occurrences are used as adverbs even in the 2000s. A
slow change in the expansion of yori can lend support to the well-known hypothe-
sis characteristic of grammaticalization, i.e., gradualness. In the last hundred years
or so, yori seems to have just started the functional expansion from the ablative to
the comparative adverb. On the other hand, we may need to remember what was
addressed in Section 3.1 as to the slow pace of change, namely, that this direction of
change might not be a natural way of change. In fact, Stassen (1985), Heine (1997)
and Kuteva et al. (2019) make no mention of the potential change from compara-
tive standard marker to comparative adverb, which will be discussed in Section 5.5.
On the other hand, if we narrow our focus to some particular sequential pat-
terns with yori, the degree of variation may be different. In fact, Himmelmann
(2004: 31) clearly mentions that where grammaticalization is witnessed it is “con-
structions and not isolated lexical items” (see Traugott (2003: 624) addressed in
Section 3.1.2), which corresponds to the collocational sequences discussed in this
study. Languages do not change in a similar manner at the same rate; however,
if a given change can be quantified in a phased manner, the result would provide
insights into other phenomena (see Section 5.2 below).8
8. The whole collocational sequences found in spoken Japanese are summarized in the
Appendix, which is based on Shibasaki (in press). The observations discussed in Sections 5.2
and 5.3 are also built on it. Note that the two sequential forms discussed in Section 5.2 cannot
5.2 Collocational sequences that preserve the earlier ablative

function of yori
In Section 5.1, we have confirmed the gradual process of the grammaticalization of

yori. The major sequential forms are summarized in the Appendix, but this does
not necessarily provide such a detailed picture of the survey results as to allow us
to fully understand what characterizes the progress of total grammaticalization.
In this section, I thus illustrate the following two collocational sequences that are
found to reflect ‘persistence’ (Hopper 1991) in grammaticalization.
5.2.1 Yori-collocations with particles

Table 1 summarizes collocational patterns in which yori is used as its comparative
(ablative case) marker, based on Morioka (1999), in which the three types of par-
ticles, i.e., Ø, wa, mo, are found to occur with the preceding yori-phrases to lay
emphasis on the comparative meanings. What the survey results tell us about this
construction is that once yori-expressions are accompanied by tangible particles,
they always serve as a comparative standard marker, as in (16) and (17), i.e., ‘per-
sistence’ (Hopper 1991).
(16) …keishiki keishiki tte-iu-kedo-ne keishiki-yori-mo naiyoo-ja-nai-no…
form form quot-say-but-pt form-than-pt content-cop-neg-qp
‘… (people often) say that formality (is important), but what is said is (more
important) than (the way people say), right?’
(1955 Kumiai Dankoo 2; C55_02_MT; SSC)
(17) Ee saitekina parameetaa-yori-wa kanari ookii atai-ni
um optimal parameter-than-top fairly big value-pt
tot-te-ori-masu
take-and-exist.hum-pol
‘Um, (we) set a much higher value (for this) than (for) optimization parameter.’
(2000s Male 30–34 yrs; A01M0264; CSJ)
On the other hand, yori-expressions with the intangible form, i.e., Ø, do not
always serve as comparative standard markers; see (2) and (3) in Section 1. How-
ever, what is important is that the adverbialized yori does not occur with any par-
ticles, either tangible or intangible, according to the survey results. In a nutshell,
the comparative adverb yori has been grammaticalized as a fixed form.
be considered as cases of lexicalization, because these are not completely unified lexical units
that combine two words, while the sequential form yori issoo discussed in Section 5.3 can be a
case of lexicalization because it is lemmatized at least in Hida and Asada (2018: 587–588).
In addition, yori can be attached not only to phrases but to clauses, as in

(18) and (19). In (18), the verb aruku ‘to walk’ takes the adnominal form that
can be accompanied directly by case-markers such as yori, while in (19), the verb
kodawaru ‘to cling to’ also takes the adnominal form but is nominalized by the
following koto ‘thing’; the whole clause is used as the comparative standard.
(18) Numa.zoi-o aruku-yori kanuu-o tsukat-ta-hoo-ga hayaku
pond.bank-acc walk-than canoe-acc use-perf-choice-nom early
mokutekichi-ni toochaku.suru-koto-ga-dekiru
destination-to arrival.do-nml-nom-can
‘(We) can arrive at the destination earlier by using a canoe than by walking on
the banks of a pond.’ (2000s Male 55–59 yrs; S07M1301; CSJ)
(19) Ee jibun-no shuchoo-ni kodawaru-koto-yori-mo
um self-gen assertion-pt cling-nml-than-pt
gooi-no-keisei-o yuusen.suru-koto-ga ee nozomashii
consensus.gen-formation-acc preference.do-nml-nom um desirable
to-s.are-te-i.masu
quot-do.pass-and-exist.pol
‘Um, it is desirable that (one should) take precedence of forming a consensus,
um, over clinging to their claim.’ (2000s Male 25–29 yrs; A04M0730; CSJ)
Further, the predominant use of the ablative function appears to have created a
variety of formulaic expressions, as partially listed in the Appendix, for example,
nani-yori (mo) ‘above all (things),’ moto-yori ‘from the beginning, of course,’ dare-
yori ‘more than anyone,’ sore-yori ‘what’s more important, instead [lit. ‘from/than
that’],’ to name just a few examples. The following is another example of a collo-
cational and colloquial use of yori, which serves as a discourse marker, usually in
sentence/utterance-initial position.
(20) Maa jugyoo-ni shuuchuu.shi-te-i.mashi-ta-kara-ne.
well class-pt concentration.do-and-exist.pol-pst-because-fp
Tte-iu-yori-wa Eigo-to-puroguramingu-ga
quot-say-than-top English-and-programming-nom
idoo-na-nde-ne
movement-cop.adn-because-fp
‘Well, (I) got focused in class. Rather, (I had to) move (to other classrooms) to
take English and programming classes.’
(2000 Yahoo! Blog; OY08_00189; BCCWJ)
These survey results tell us that yori remains ablative-oriented in terms of fre-
quency, as in Table 2, resulting in the production of ablative-based formulaic
expressions of various types as shown in the Appendix. Considering the fact that
the grammaticalization of yori is still progressing slowly, it is far from impossible

that yori will become more polyfunctional at least as long as it is ablative-oriented.
In the next subsection, we will see another collocational sequence that retains
the ablative function of yori.
5.2.2 Yori co-occurring with sarani ‘moreover’

Morioka (1999: 198) points out that the sequence of yori with the adverb sarani
‘moreover’ facilitates the progress of change in yori from the comparative standard
(ablative) marker to the comparative adverb. Morioka (1999) makes a shrewd guess
as to many aspects of contact-induced changes in Mod-J and carries out an inten-
sive study of what gave rise to the adverbial function of yori. In what follows, I will
thus investigate the degree of grammaticalization by comparing yori’s functions
between 1895–1925 and 1976–2008.
Table 4 summarizes the results of the surveys based on Taiyo (1895–1925)
and BCCWJ (1976–2008). The number of examples retrieved from Taiyo is very
small; therefore, all the examples are lumped together for the sake of convenience.
Rel. freq. = relative frequency.
Table 4. The degree of grammaticalization of yori in the sequence of yori sarani

1895–1925 1976–1989 1990–1999 2000–2003 2004–2008 Total
yori (ABL) + sarani 38 (100%) 37 (97.4%) 62 (100%) 70 (100%) 83 (100%) 290 (99.7%)
(ADV )
yori (ADV ) + --- 1 (2.6%) --- --- --- 1 (0.3%)
sarani (ADV )
Total (rel. freq. %) 38 (100%) 38 (100%) 62 (100%) 70 (100%) 83 (100%) 291 (100%)
It is obvious that in this particular sequence, i.e., yori sarani, yori has retained
its ablative function over a century, contrary to Morioka’s (1999) expectation. His
shrewd observation is no doubt perceptive; however, this survey result turns out
to be inconsistent with his survey, showing a new and undeniable aspect of yori.
Here are two examples from the ends of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies, respectively. In both examples, yori serves an ablative function.
(21) yori (ablative) + sarani (adverb)
ima-yori sarani okoshi-te shin-kyoku-o tsukur.i,…
now-than moreover hang.tough-and new-song-acc make.and
‘(we) put in more effort than now on composing new songs, and …’
(1895 Kagura; Taiyo)
(22) yori (ablative) + sarani (adverb)

Beikoku-wa tousho-wa kokusai-kakaku-yori sarani yasuku
U.S.A.-top at.first-top international-price-than moreover cheap
hojokin.tsuki-de danpingu-yushutsu-o suru-keredomo,…
subsidized-by dumping-export-acc do-but
‘At the beginning, the United States was active in subsidy and dumping export
at a much lower price than at international prices, …’
(1987 Kokumin Shokkan o Teigensuru; LBb6_00010; BCCWJ)
On the other hand, the following is the only exceptional example that includes the
adverbial yori in this particular sequence.
(23) yori (adverb) + sarani (adverb)
2 Kaikyaku-zenkutsu < kiryoku-ga tsuku > Yori sarani
Section 2 leg.straddled-forward.flexion stamina-nom attach more moreover
kokyuu-o ookiku.shi, nou-e ketsueki-o sumuuzu.ni okuru tasuke-o-suru
respiration big.do brain-to blood-acc smoothly send help-acc-do.adn
undoo
exercise
‘Section 2: Forward bending with legs straddled “Feel one’s spirit emerge.”
(This is an) exercise that increases respiration much more and supplies blood
to the brain.’ (1988 Konnani Yasete Iikashira; OB3X_00124; BCCWJ)
This example comes from a diet book. The first line is the section title, accom-
panied by the description of the effect of forward bending with legs straddled in
the next lines. Here, yori is used in sentence-initial position without any preced-
ing element; namely, the usage is adverbial. Of course, this usage is grammatically
correct, but it is also true that as a native speaker of Japanese, I feel something is
wrong with this sequence. One reason is that this sequential usage is quite excep-
tional, as shown in Table 4. What is important here, however, is that all the other
cases of yori sarani illustrate the effect of the retention of yori’s ablative function.
This survey result also lends support to the slow progression of the grammatical-
ization of yori.
5.3 A collocational sequence that reflects the newer adverbial

function of yori
We have thus far confirmed the gradual process of change in Section 5.1 and two
cases that slow the progress of grammaticalization in Section 5.2. In this section,
we turn to another collocational sequence, which is also pointed out by Morioka
(1999), that is considered to have lubricated the grammaticalization of yori from
the ablative marker to the comparative adverb, i.e., yori issoo. The survey results
based on Taiyo and BCCWJ are shown in Table 5.
The results in Table 5 stand in marked contrast to the results in Table 4. In
the stage of 1895–1925, yori was ablative-oriented in the sequential use yori issoo
in much the same way as yori was ablative-oriented in the sequence yori sarani in
Table 4. However, from the stage of 1976–1989 onward, yori has become adverbial-
oriented in this collocational sequence, as predicted in Morioka (1999).
Table 5. The degree of grammaticalization of yori in the sequence of yori issoo

1895–1925 1976–1989 1990–1999 2000–2003 2004–2008 Total
yori (ABL) + issoo 26 (96.3%) 6 (6.2%) 14 (9.3%) 17 (9.2%) 11 (5.1%) 74 (11%)
(ADV )
yori (ADV ) + issoo 1 (3.7%) 91 (93.8%) 137 (90.7%) 168 (90.8%) 203 (94.9%) 600 (89%)
(ADV )
Total (rel. freq. %) 27 (100%) 97 (100%) 151 (100%) 185 (100%) 214 (100%) 674 (100%)
Here are examples. In (24), yori is used as an ablative marker, while in (25), it is
used as a comparative adverb. Albeit in the limited set of data used for this study,
(25) is the earliest environment in which yori served as a comparative adverb in
this sequential use.
(24) yori (ablative) + issoo (adverb)
Yo-wa jitsu.ni tooji-ni at.te ima-yori issoo
I.formal-top by.my.faith those.days-pt exist-and now-than moreover
chimitsu-naru giron-o kiki-shi…
meticulousness-cop.adn discussion-acc hear-and
‘By my faith I listened to a more detailed discussion at that time than now
and …’
(1985 Kokujiron to Ishokujuuron; Taiyo)
(25) yori (adverb) + issoo (adverb)

sore-wa bunka.teki shizen-o
that-top cultural nature-acc
sinryoku-to tairyoku-to-o genshi.teki
spiritual.strength-and physical.strength-and-acc primitive
toohi.suru-no-de-wa-naku.te, jinsei-no kyoosoo-ni
escape.do-nml-cop-top-not.and life-gen competition-pt
shizen-no soboku.na naka-kara
nature-gen simple inside-from
yori issoo taer-are-ru-dake-no
more moreover bear-can-pres-only-gen
hiki.dashi-tai-tame-ni ryokoo.suru-no-de-aru.
pull.out-want-purp-pt trip.do-nml-cop-exist
‘That is, (I) make a trip not to escape from the natural way of things but to
bring out both spiritual and physical strengths from the naive-ness of pristine
nature, by which (I) can survive the battlefield of life much more (effectively).’
(1917 Shintoo Zasoo; Taiyo)
In terms of frequency, it is safe to say that yori has become adverbial-oriented in

the second half of the twentieth century, and this survey result provides a piece
of evidence for Morioka’s (1999) observational adequacy. Further, the sequenced
adverbs yori issoo ‘much more’ can be regarded as a formulaic expression, as Hida
and Asada (2018: 587–588) properly treat in their dictionary (see Section 1 for this
discussion).
The current study is part of the larger research project as noted in the acknowl-
edgments. However, yori issoo is the only collocational sequence so far that facil-
itates the grammaticalization of yori in an obvious fashion from the ablative
case-marker to the comparative adverb. It is true that there are other minor changes
within the progress of yori’s grammaticalization, as shown in the Appendix. If we
continue to enlarge the size of our data, I believe we will be able to find more inter-
esting and crucial examples so that we can take this research project one step fur-
ther.
5.4 Language contact and ‘extravagance’
In this subsection, I will briefly discuss the emergence of the adverbial yori from
the viewpoint of ‘extravagance’ (Haspelmath 1999) as well as language contact
(leading to contact-induced grammaticalization; Narrog & Heine 2021).
The maxim of extravagance is explained as follows.
(26) Extravagance: talk in such a way that you are noticed. (Haspelmath 1999: 1055)
This maxim is based on Keller’s (1994) invisible-hand theory on the assumption

that “language change is an unintended byproduct of ordinary language use …
viewed as an invisible-hand process, that is, a phenomenon that is the result of
human actions” (Haspelmath 1999: 1054). On the other hand, the maxim of extrav-
agance is unique in that speakers use innovative expressions to achieve social suc-
cess, i.e., in order to be noticed and adopted by other speakers, by choosing “a new
way of saying old things,” for example, by means of for with (Haspelmath 1999: 1057).
Haspelmath’s maxim of extravagance may echo with Du Bois’s (2003) view of
discourse and grammar as below.
(27) Theoretical assumptions about discourse and grammar
a. Speakers exploit available grammatical structures to realize their goals in
speaking;
b. The aggregate sum of what speakers do in discourse exhibits recurrent
patterning beyond what is predicted by rules of grammar;
c. Grammatical structure tends to evolve along lines laid down by discourse
pattern: grammars code best what speakers do most.
(Du Bois 2003: 49)
What is stated in (27a) and (27b) corresponds to “a new way of saying old things”
(Haspelmath 1999: 1057) just mentioned above. The idea in (27c), which is also a
synchronic view of ongoing change in conversation and interaction, can perfectly
naturally give an account of the diachronic change of yori discussed above and
summarized in the Appendix.
As to the characteristics of contact-induced grammaticalization, Narrog and
Heine (2021: 203–215) propose several diagnostics to see whether cases in focus
are contact-induced or not. Once given phenomena can be regarded as potential
cases of contact-induced grammaticalization, they further examine how such
cases spread among a larger number of speakers. In what follows, we deepen our
considerations of the emergence of the adverbial yori under the rubric of their
diagnostics, i.e., ‘rare grammatical category’ and ‘demographic variables,’ because
these are highly relevant to this particular phenomenon.9
9. Narrog and Heine’s (2021: 204–210) diagnostics for the evidence of contact-induced gram-
maticalization are (i) genetic patterning, (ii) rare grammatical category, and (iii) paired
grammaticalization, while their diagnostics for the direction of transfer are (i) degree of gram-
maticalization, (ii) frequency of use, and (iii) demographic variables. They state that among
the first set, “rare phenomena are particularly sensitive to contact-induced language change
(p. 208)”; the other two are not related to the current case according to their definitions.
Among the second set, the diagnostic of demographic variables is only applicable to the cur-
rent case (see below in this subsection). Note that their diagnostics are defined around the
premise of ‘neighboring languages’; however, as shown in this study, target languages seem not
necessarily to exist side by side.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Carità
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Title: Carità
Author: Mrs. Oliphant
Release date: November 25, 2023 [eBook #72221]
Language: English
Original publication: London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1885
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARITÀ ***

‘But nothing shall stand between us any more.’
CARITÀ
BY MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF “WITHIN THE PRECINCTS,” ETC.
CHEAP EDITION
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1885
All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Beresfords 1
II. A Fright 10
III. Honeymooning 18
IV. The Three Charities 26
V. Coming Home 35
VI. The Consultation 44
VII. The Catastrophe 53
VIII. Consolation 62
IX. The Hill 71
X. The Square 80
XI. Mrs. Meredith 88
XII. The House next Door 98
XIII. The Young People 107
XIV. The Old People 117
XV. Roger 126
XVI. Sunday Evening 135
XVII. Edward 145
XVIII. Telling Tales 155
XIX. The Holy Inquisition 164
XX. The Perugino 173
XXI. A Confidence 183
XXII. Mystified 193
XXIII. A Remonstrance 202
XXIV. On the Other Side of the Wall 212
XXV. An Idealist 222
XXVI. In the ‘House’ 231
XXVII. The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing 241
XXVIII. The Fireside 251
XXIX. The Old Folk and the Young 261
XXX. A Rebellious Heart 269
XXXI. The House of Mourning 279
XXXII. Taking up Dropt Stitches 288
XXXIII. Little Emmy’s Visitors 297
XXXIV. The Widow 308
XXXV. Roger’s Fate 317
XXXVI. Between the Two 326
XXXVII. The Crisis Approaching 336
XXXVIII. The Supreme Moment 346
XXXIX. The Hand of Fate 355
XL. Two—Parted 364
XLI. Two—To be One? 373
XLII. A Great Revolution 382
XLIII. The Worst Scrape of All 393
XLIV. Clearing Up 402
XLV. Conclusion 412
CARITÀ.
CHAPTER I.
THE BERESFORDS.
James Beresford and Annie his wife had been married for more than a
dozen years—their only child, indeed, had nearly attained the age of twelve
at the time when this history begins. They had both got footing on that
plateau of middle age which, if it comes to something like level ground at
thirty, need not think of a descending step for twenty years—the time of the
greatest enjoyments and most solid progress of life. He was at one end and
she at the other of the first decade; the one approaching the forties, the other
scarcely well out of the twenties; both ready to laugh at the advance of years,
which was as yet but a joke to them, and neither having thought of bidding
any grave farewell to youth. She was impulsive, enthusiastic and nervous; he
philosophical and speculative, a man ready to discuss any theory in earth or
heaven, and without any prejudices such as might make one subject of
discussion appear less legitimate than another. They were not very rich, but
neither were they poor in any sense of the word. He had been called to the
Bar, but had never gone any further in that career. They had enough between
them to live on without show, but without pinching, as so many people of
quietly social, semi-literary tastes do in London. They knew a number of
people. They saw all the pictures, read all the books, and heard all the music
that was going; not absorbed in any art, but with just enough devotion to all
to make their life full and pleasant. And there could scarcely be a pleasanter
life. The fantasies of youth, but not the sentiment of youth, had ended for
both. Mr. Beresford had some mildly scientific pursuits, was a member of
some learned societies, and of one or two new and advanced clubs where
clever men were supposed to abound. Occasionally in his comfortable
library he wrote an article for a review or magazine, which was very much
talked about by his friends, to the great edification and amusement of people
who live by writing articles and say nothing about them. This gave him an
agreeable sense of duty to add seriousness to his life; and he was never
without occupation—meetings of committees, scraps of semi-public
business, educational and other projects, which, for the moment at least,
seemed full of interest to the world, made him feel himself a not
unimportant, certainly not a useless, man. Mrs. Beresford, on her side, had
the natural occupation of her housekeeping, and her child, whose education
gave her much thought—so much thought that many people with full
nurseries listened with a certain awe to her ideas of all that was necessary for
her little girl, and sighed to think how much less was possible when there
were six or seven little girls to think of.
The child, however, was not so over-educated and over-cared for as might
have been fancied; for the parents were young, as has been said, very fond of
each other, and fond of their own way; which likings did not consist with the
burden of dragging a small child with them wherever they went. The
Beresfords liked to go about ‘honeymooning,’ as their friends called it, and
as they themselves were not displeased to call it, by themselves, over the
world. They would start sometimes quite suddenly, to the Riviera in the
middle of winter, to escape London fogs and wintry chills; to Paris at Easter;
to Scotland in the autumn; even to Norway sometimes, or such difficult
places; and it stood to reason that they could not take the child with them
when they started at a day’s notice on these delightful journeys. For their
journeys were delightful. They were well enough off not to require to count
the cost; they went lightly, with little luggage and no servants, and they went
everywhere together. But it would have been bad for the little girl; therefore
she stayed at home, under the care of the best of nurses, who had been Mrs.
Beresford’s nurse before the child’s; and the father and mother, like two
lovers, roamed lightly about the world. But when they were at home, Mrs.
Beresford talked a great deal about education, and had plans enough to have
educated six princesses, let alone one little girl of undistinguished lineage. It
was a very lucky thing for all parties, their friends said, that they had but this
one child. Had they been hampered by half-a-dozen, what could they have
done? It would have changed their life completely. And one of their many
felicities was, that whereas they were preserved from the old-maidishness of
childless married persons by having a child, their freedom of action was
preserved by the fact that they had but one.
And they were wonderfully free of other relations who might have
hampered them. Mrs. Beresford had been an orphan from her childhood,
brought up by her grandmother, who in the course of nature was dead too;
and Mr. Beresford’s only two relations were a wealthy aunt, Charity
Beresford, who lived in a pretty house in the country, within driving distance
of London, and with whom lived his elder sister, Cherry Beresford, named
after her aunt, and living in considerable subjection to that energetic woman.
Miss Beresford was the richest member of the family, and her nephew had
expectations from her; and Charity was the favourite female name of this
branch of the race. But the idea of calling her child Charity did not at all
smile upon young Mrs. Beresford when her baby was born. She was
beguiled, however, by the unusual look of it, which charmed her, into calling
the little girl by the more melodious name of Carità, contracted prettily into
Cara in the drawing-room, and Carry in the nursery. Aunt Charity growled
when she heard of this, but did not otherwise complain, and gentle Aunt
Cherry declared herself unfeignedly glad that her little niece had thus
escaped the worse consequences of a symbolical name. When the young
couple went away pleasuring, little Cara very often would be sent to
Sunninghill, to pass the quiet days there under the charge of the aunts; and
so all responsibility was removed from the minds of the parents. They had a
letter sent to them every day to assure them of their welfare, however far off
they might go—an extravagance which Aunt Charity condemned loudly, but
which Aunt Cherry was proud of, as showing the devotion of the parents to
little Cara. The child herself was very happy at Sunninghill, and was a much
more prominent person there than at home, where very often she was in the
way, and interrupted conversation. For a father and mother who are very
fond of each other, and have a great deal to talk of, often, it must be allowed,
are hampered by the presence of one curious child, with quick ears and an
inconveniently good memory. In this particular the half-dozen would have
been more easily managed than the one.
Thus the Beresfords led a very pleasant life. They had the prettiest house;
naturally, travelling so much as they did, they had been able to ‘pick up’ a
great many charming things. You could scarcely see their walls for pictures;
some very good, one or two wonderful windfalls, and the rest pretty enough;
nothing strikingly bad, or next to nothing. Where other people had ordinary
china, they had genuine old faïence, and one or two plaques which Raphael
himself might have seen perhaps—Urbino ware, with Messer Giorgio’s
name upon it. Not to speak of the Venice point which Mrs. Beresford wore,
there were brackets in the drawing-room hung with scraps of old point coupé
which many a lady would have been glad to trim her dress with; and, instead
of common portières, they had two pieces of old tapestry from an Italian
convent which devotees went down on their knees before. But I have not
space to tell you how many pretty things they had. It was one of the
pleasures of their life whenever they saw anything that pleased them to bring
it home for the decoration of that pretty drawing-room, or the library, which
Mr. Beresford had filled with old vellum-bound volumes of curious editions,
and pretty books in Russian leather which kept the room always fragrant.
What was wanting to this pleasant, warm, full, delightful living? Nothing but
continuance; and it had not struck either of them that there was any doubt of
this for long, long years at least. What a long way off threescore years and
ten look when you are not yet forty! and death looked further off still.
Neither of them thought of dying. Why should they? For, to be sure, though
we know very well that must happen to us some time, in our hearts we are
incredulous, and do not believe that we ever can die. The Beresfords never
dreamt of anything so frightful. They were well, they were happy, they were
young; and as it had been, so it would be; and a world so bright they felt
must mean to go on for ever.
When Cara was about ten, however, the mother began to feel less well
than usual. There was nothing much the matter with her, it was thought:
want of ‘tone,’—a little irritability of disposition—a nervous temperament.
What she wanted was change of air and scene. And she got that, and got
better, as was thought; but then became ill again. No, not ill—unwell,
indisposed, mal à son aise, nothing more. There was nothing the matter with
her really, the doctors thought. Her lungs and her heart, and all vital organs,
were perfectly sound; but there was a little local irritation which, acting upon
a nervous temperament—— The nervous temperament was perpetually kept
in the front, and all sorts of evils imputed to its agency. At Sunninghill, it
must be confessed, they did not believe in the illness at all.
‘Fudge,’ said Aunt Charity, who had always been strong, and had no faith
in nerves, ‘don’t talk to me of your nervous temperaments. I know what it
means. It means that Annie has fallen sick of always having her own way.
She has everything she can desire, and she is ill of having nothing more to
wish for. A case of Alexander over again in a London drawing-room—that’s
what it is, and nothing else, my word upon it; and I know my niece.’
‘Yes, Mr. Maxwell; perhaps there is some truth in what Aunt Charity
says,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘I think you know I don’t judge harshly——’
‘That means that I judge harshly,’ said Miss Charity, bursting in; ‘thank
you, my dear. Well, you may call me uncharitable if you please; but there’s
where it is; let James lose the half of his fortune, or all his china get broken,
and she’d come round in no time—that’s what ails Annie. But as she belongs
to a very refined society, and has a silly husband, it’s called nerves. Bless
me, Cherry, I hope I knew what nerves were, and all about it, before you
were born.’
‘You could not know Annie before I was born,’ said Miss Cherry, who
was devoid of imagination. ‘I hope you will give her your best attention, Mr.
Maxwell. My brother James is a very fond husband, poor fellow! If anything
happened to Annie, he would never get the better of it. As for marrying
again, or anything of that sort——’
‘Good heavens!’ said the doctor; ‘I hope there is no need to take such an
idea into consideration. We must not go so fast.’
Miss Charity laughed. She was a great deal older than her niece, but
much more sensible. ‘There’s the seventh commandment to be thought of,’
she said; for her remarks were sometimes more free than they ought to be,
and put Miss Cherry to the blush: and this was all the worse because she
immediately walked out into the garden through the open window and left
the younger lady alone with the doctor, who was an old friend of the family,
and contemporary of the second Charity Beresford. Very old friends they
were; even it was supposed that in their youth there had been or might have
been passages of sentiment between these two now sitting so calmly
opposite each other. Mr. Maxwell, however, by this time was a widower, and
not at all sentimental. He laughed, too, as Miss Beresford made her exit by
the window. He was very well used to the family, and all its ways.
‘She wears very well,’ he said, reflectively. ‘I don’t think she has aged to
speak of for these twenty years. When I used to be coming here in my early
days, when I was beginning practice——’
‘The rest of us have changed very much since then.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Maxwell, thinking most of himself; ‘but she not at all. I
could think when I look at her that I was still, as I say, a young fellow
beginning practice——’
Miss Cherry sighed—very softly, but still she did sigh: over forty, but still
in the position and with many of the sentiments of a girl. People laugh at the
combination, but it is a touching one on the whole. What ages of lingering
monotonous life had passed over her since her present companion began his
practice, since her Aunt Charity had begun to be an old woman! Dr.
Maxwell had married, had lost his wife, had gone through perhaps sharper
troubles than Miss Cherry had known. He was now middle-aged and stoutish
and weather-beaten—weather-beaten in aspect and in soul—while she was
slim and soft and maidenly still. The sigh was half for those uneventful
years, and half for the undevelopment which she was conscious of—the
unchangedness of herself, underneath the outer guise, which was changed;
but this was not safe ground, nor could it be talked of. So she brushed away
the sigh with a little cough, and added quickly:
‘I know perhaps what nerves are better than my aunt does, and I know
Annie better. Tell me seriously, Mr. Maxwell, now we are alone. You don’t
apprehend anything serious? Should she go on travelling and running about
as they do if there is really anything the matter? No one can be so much
interested as I am. You would be quite frank with me?’
‘It is the best thing for her,’ said the doctor. ‘You now—I should not say
the same for you. You are a tranquil person and patient; but for her, the more
she runs about the better. It distracts her and keeps her from thinking. If she
worries, it’s all over with a woman like that.’
‘She has so little to worry about.’
‘Just so; and the less one has to bear the less one is fit for; that is to say,’
said the doctor, getting up and going to the window, ‘the less some people
are fit for. There’s that old aunt of yours to prove me a fool. She has never
had anything to bear, that I know of; and she is strong enough to bear
anything. Sixty-eight, and just look at her. There’s a physique for you—that
is the kind of woman,’ Mr. Maxwell said, with a little outburst of
professional enthusiasm, ‘that I admire—as straight as a rod still, and every
faculty in good order. That a woman like that should never have married is a
loss to the world.’
Miss Cherry, who had gone to the window too, and stood by his side,
looked out somewhat wistfully at her old aunt. Cherry was not like her, but
took after the other side of the family, her own mother, who had died young,
and had not possessed any physique to speak of. ‘It is very sweet to-day in
the garden,’ she said, inconsequently, and stepped out into the world of
flowers and sunshine. Sunninghill was an ideal house for two ladies, a place
which people who were shut out from such delights considered quite enough
for happiness. Indeed, Miss Cherry Beresford’s friends in general resented
deeply the little plaintive air she sometimes took upon her. ‘What could she
wish for more?’ they said, indignantly; ‘a place that was just too good to be
wasted on two single women. There should be a family in it.’ This was
especially the sentiment of the rector’s wife, who was a friend of Cherry’s,
and who felt it a personal slight to herself, who had a large family and many
cares, when Cherry Beresford, with not a thing in the world to trouble her,
presumed to look as if she was not quite happy. The house stood upon a hill,
fringed round with small but delightful woods. These woods were on a level
with the highest turrets of the great beautiful royal Castle of St. George,
which lay full within sight in the afternoon sunshine. So you may imagine
what a view it was that was visible from the old smooth velvet lawn round
the house, which formed the apex to these woods. The quiet plain all around
lay basking in the light underneath, and the Castle upon its hill dominated,
with a broad and placid grandeur, that majestic sweep of country, with all its
lights and shadows. The royal flag fluttered on the breeze, the great tower
rose grey and solid against the sky. Green branches framed in this picture on
every side; the cuttings in the trees made a picture-gallery indeed of different
views for different hours, according to the lights. ‘What a lovely place it is!’
Mr. Maxwell said, with sudden enthusiasm; ‘I always forget how lovely it is
till I come back.’
‘Yes, it is beautiful,’ said Cherry, who was used to it. ‘If you are going to
send them away, I suppose Cara may come to us for the summer?—that
makes such a difference.’ Cherry was very well used to the different lights.
She acknowledged the beauty of her home, and yet I can fancy
circumstances under which she would have liked a little house in a street
better. Man or woman either cannot live by beauty alone any more than by
bread.
‘Here’s a pretty business,’ said Miss Beresford, briskly; ‘half of my roses,
I believe, spoiled for this year; no second show this time. Jones is the
greatest idiot; he pretends to know everything, and he knows nothing. Your
protégé, Cherry, of course. All the incapables hang on by you.’
‘I can’t see any signs of deficiency,’ said the doctor, looking round.
‘Not at this moment; if there were, he should have his dismissal on the
spot. If those two go off again, as you are always sending them off, tell
James I insist on the child coming here. Ah! that’s what your women of
nervous temperament do—leave their children at home in a poky London
square, while they go wandering over the world. Tell them I wish it,’ said
Miss Beresford, with a laugh; ‘they never go against me.’
‘They know how kind you always are.’
‘They know I’m old and will have something to leave behind me, that’s
the plain English of it—as if I was going to accept poor Cherry’s subjection,
poor soul, without rewarding her for it! It is she who will have everything
when I’m gone. I’ve told them that, but still they think there’s a chance that
Cara might cut her old aunt out. I can see through them. I see through most
people,’ she added, with a laugh, looking at him full. How could she know
the thought passing through his mind at the moment, which was the abrupt
reflection, uncalled for perhaps, that for a professional man, who had made
no extraordinary name in his profession, Cherry Beresford, though an old
maiden, would make not such a bad wife? Could the old witch see through
broadcloth, and the comfortable coating of middle-aged flesh and blood,
straight into a man’s heart? He grew red foolishly, as if that were possible,
and stammered a little in his reply:
‘I can believe everything that is clever of you as well as everything that is
kind; though why you ladies should make such a point of having a little chit
like that, who can only disturb your quiet in this paradise of a place——’
‘Oh, how can you say so!’ said Cherry. ‘The child’s voice and the child’s
face make all the difference—they are better than sunshine. They make the
place beautiful. I would give it all, twenty times over, to have the child.’
‘Whom her mother is very glad to leave behind her.’
‘Hold your tongue, Cherry,’ said the elder lady; ‘you mild little old
maids, you are always in a way about children. I never took up that line. A
child in the abstract is a nuisance. Now, a man—there are advantages about a
man. Sometimes he’s a nuisance too, but sometimes he’s a help. Believe
them, and they’ll tell you that marriage was always far from their thoughts,
but that children are their delight. That’s not my way of thinking. But I
happen to like little Cara because she is Cara, not because she is a child. So
she may come and take her chance with the rest.’
Cherry had turned away along the garden path, and was looking through
one of the openings at one of the views. She knew it by heart—exactly how
the light fell, and where were the shadows, and the name of every tower, and
almost the shape of every cloud. Was it wonderful that this was not so
delightful to her as to the strangers who could not see that view every day in
their lives? To some people, indeed, the atmospheric changes, the effects of
wind and colour, the waverings and dispersions of those clouds, would have
made poetry enough to fill up all that was wanting; but poor Miss Cherry
was not poetical in this big way, though she was very fond of pretty verses,
and even wrote some occasionally; but how she longed for the child’s
innocent looks—the child’s ceaseless prattle! Her gentle delicacy was hurt at
that unnecessary gibe about the old-maidishness, and her supposed sham
rejection of the husband who had never come her way. ‘Why should she talk
of men—especially before him? What do I want with men?’ said poor Miss
Cherry to herself; ‘but my own niece—my brother’s child—surely I may
wish for her.’ And surely there could not have been a more innocent wish.
CHAPTER II.
A FRIGHT.
‘Which you please; you are not gouty or rheumatical, or anything of that
sort,’ said Mr. Maxwell, almost gaily. ‘Homburg, for instance—Homburg
would do—or Baden, if you prefer that. I incline to the one you prefer; and
enjoy yourself as much as you can—that is my prescription. Open air,
novelty, change; and if you find you don’t relish one place, go to another.
The sea, if you take a fancy for the sea; and Sir William is of my opinion
exactly. Choose the place which amuses you most.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Mr. Beresford, ‘that these wise men are laughing at
you, Annie. They know there’s nothing the matter with you. If I were not
much obliged to them for thinking so, I should say you had some reason to
be offended. One knows what you doctors mean when you tell a patient to
do whatever she likes best.’
‘It means one of two things,’ said Mrs. Beresford; ‘either that it is
nothing, or that it is hopeless——’
Her husband burst into a soft laugh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is very evident it
cannot be the last—so it must be as I say. It is injurious to our pride, my
darling; for I allow that it is pleasant to possess either in your own person or
your wife’s a delicate and mysterious malady, of which it can be said that it
baffles the doctors, without very much hurting the patient; but never mind. If
you can bear this disrespectful verdict that you have nothing the matter with
you, I assure you it makes me quite happy.’
Mrs. Beresford looked at the doctor with very keen, eager eyes—eyes
which had grown bigger and keener of late, perhaps from the failing of the
round, smooth outlines of the face. She noticed that, though Maxwell saw
very well that she was looking at him, he did not reply to those looks, but
rather turned to her husband and answered him, as if he had not observed her
at all.
‘I don’t mean to be at all disrespectful,’ he said; ‘there is a little
disturbance of the system, which might turn to something as serious as you
could desire, and take away the comfort of life perhaps more completely
than a regular disease; but I hope that is not likely to happen here.’
‘No; I don’t think it,’ said the easy man. ‘We shall try Baden, which is the
prettiest—unless you prefer some other place; in short, we shall go off
without guide or compass, and do exactly what pleases ourselves. We have
done so, it must be allowed, pretty often before—but to do it with the
sanction of the faculty——’
‘And the child—as usual—will go to Sunninghill?’
‘Why should you say as usual, Mr. Maxwell?’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a
suspicion of offence. ‘Do you think I ought to take her with me? Do you
suppose, perhaps, that I might not come back again—that I might never—
see——’
‘This is so unnecessary,’ said the doctor, remonstrating. ‘What must I
say? I wish I was as certain of a thousand a year. You will come back quite
well, I hope.’
‘When people are very ill don’t you say much the same things to them?
There was poor Susan Maitland, whom you banished to Italy to die. People
talked of her coming back again. Oh, no! I am not thinking of myself, but of
the subject in general. One needed only to look in her face to see that she
would never come back.’
‘People have different ideas of their duty,’ said Maxwell. ‘Some think it
best not to frighten a patient with thoughts of death. I don’t know that one
can lay down any rule; one is guided by circumstances. To some nervous
people it is best not to say anything. Some are more frightened than others—
just as some people are more susceptible to pain than others.’
‘Now I am going to ask you another question,’ said Mrs. Beresford.
‘Suppose you had a patient very ill—I mean hopelessly ill, beyond all cure
—do you think it is right to keep them alive as you do now, struggling to the
last, staving off every new attack that might carry them off in quiet, fighting
on and on to the last moment, and even prolonging that, when it comes so
far, with cordials and stimulants? Keeping their breath in their poor,
suffering bodies till you get to the end of your resources—your dreadful,
cruel resources, that is what I call them. Do you think this is right? I had an
aunt who died dreadfully—of cancer——’
‘Ah! An aunt? You did not tell me this,’ said the doctor, off his guard;
then, recovering himself, with something that looked like alarm, he said,
hurriedly: ‘What would you have us do—kill the poor creatures? neglect
them? refuse what aid, what alleviations we can——’
‘I’ll tell you what I should like you to do if it were me,’ she said, eagerly.
‘When it was all over, when you were sure I could not get better, when there
was nothing more in life but to suffer—suffer: then I should like you to
make a strong, sweet dose for me to put me out of my trouble. I should like
James to give it me. Do you remember what was said that time in India, in
the mutiny? I don’t know if it was true, but people said it. That the husbands
of some of the poor ladies kissed them and shot them, to save them; don’t
you remember? That is what I should like you to do—a sweet, strong dose;
and James would bring it to me and kiss me, and put it to my lips. That
would be true love!’ she said, growing excited, the pale roses in her cheeks
becoming hectic red; ‘that would be true friendship, Mr. Maxwell! Then I
should not feel afraid. I should feel that you two stood between me and
anguish, between me and agony——’
Both the men rose to their feet as if to restrain her vehemence, with one
impulse. ‘My darling, my darling!’ said James Beresford, in dismay, ‘what
are you thinking of?’ As for Mr. Maxwell, he walked to the window and
looked out, his features working painfully. There was a moment in which the
husband and wife clung together, he consoling her with every reassuring
word that he could think of, she clinging to him with long, hysterical sobs.
‘My love, what has put this into your head?’ he said, half sobbing too, yet
pretending to laugh. ‘My Annie, what fancy is this? Have you lost your wits,
my darling? Why, this is all folly; it is a dream; it is a craze you have taken
into your head. Here is Maxwell will tell you——’
But Maxwell made him a sign over his wife’s head so impassioned and
imperative that the man was struck dumb for the moment. He gazed blankly
at the doctor, then stooped down to murmur fond words less distinct and
articulate in her ear. Fortunately, she was too much excited, too much
disturbed, to notice this sudden pause, or that the doctor said nothing in
response to her husband’s appeal. She held fast by his arm and sobbed, but
gradually grew calmer, soothed by his tenderness, and after a while made a
half-smiling, tearful apology for her weakness. It was after dinner on a
lovely summer evening, not more than twilight, though it was late. The two
gentlemen had been lingering over their claret, while she lay on the sofa
waiting for them, for she did not choose to be shut up upstairs all by herself,
she said. After she had recovered they went to the drawing-room, where the

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This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical

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© 2023 – John Benjamins B.V.

section i. Diachronic approaches

section ii. Synchronic approaches

section iii. Interactive contexts

1. Grammaticalization: Historical background

2. Defining grammaticalization and grammar

As the name suggests, grammaticalization involves a process in which something

discussion). Do they undergo grammaticalization? Can they be considered as

conceptual information, while discourse markers, pronouns, tense, aspect, and

3. Wide vs narrow views of grammaticalization

4. Recent issues in grammaticalization theory

research strands centred on intersubjectivity also led to a new dialogic turn in

5. The present volume

rather restrictive, i.e. comparatively more limited to clause-external elements than

tionship between the emergence of grammatical patterns and intersubjectivity in

Andersen, Henning. 2001. Actualization and the (uni)directionality of change. In

Croft, William. 2010. The origins of grammaticalization in the verbalization of experience.

From comparative standard marker

This study investigates the grammaticalization of the Japanese ablative

Keywords: ablative markers, comparative standard markers, comparative

This study investigates the process of grammaticalization of the Japanese ablative

(1) Ablative usage

In (1), yori follows takoo ‘another school’ to indicate a source of information in a

(5) shienkin-yori yori issoo juuyoo-na-no-wa

2. A short history of yori

3. Preceding studies on yori and language contact

3.1 Preceding studies on yori

3.1.1 Hida (1992, 2019)

(based on Hida 1992: 475)

In the verbatim translation, yori seems to be used to indicate the comparative

3.1.2 Morioka (1999)

It is surprising that there were/are such a large array of collocational sequences

3.2 Language contact research on Japanese

5. Survey results and discussion

5.1 Gradualness of grammaticalization

Table 2. The pace of change in the grammaticalization of yori: An overview

Overall, the speed of progress of this particular grammaticalization appears to be

5.2 Collocational sequences that preserve the earlier ablative

In Section 5.1, we have confirmed the gradual process of the grammaticalization of

5.2.1 Yori-collocations with particles

In addition, yori can be attached not only to phrases but to clauses, as in

the grammaticalization of yori is still progressing slowly, it is far from impossible

5.2.2 Yori co-occurring with sarani ‘moreover’

Table 4. The degree of grammaticalization of yori in the sequence of yori sarani

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