The Grammaticalization of "Because" in Standard English

Document Type

Research Paper

Publication Date

2017

Keywords

Grammatcialization, Because, Preposition, Diachronic

Abstract

This diachronic investigation of because has its genesis in recent usage developments which deserve scrutiny. Leading up to its naming as the American Dialect Society’s 2013 “Word of the Year,” it was popularly considered, recently by McCulloch (2014) as a subordinating conjunction; alternately it is given as a subordinating preposition (Lobeck and Denham, 2013). Corpora study shows grammaticalization at all levels of linguistic analysis, and show unidirectionality in its clines. Compelling evidence of grammaticalization is detailed in morphophonological, semantic-pragmatic, and syntactic domains.

Comments

This paper was nominated for the Libraries Undergraduate Research Award by Dr. Janet Xing, faculty in Western Washington University’s Department of Linguistics.

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

English language--Prepositions; English language--Grammaticalization

Genre/Form

term papers

Type

Text

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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