Gram - SEAS

22 2 The history of grammaticalizatioll
lndo-Europeanists had speculated intensely about the origins of grammatical
forms. But their results had been random and unreliable. Moreover, they had
insisted on placing these results in a "glottogonic" context, that is, the context of a
supposed evolutionary line that would lead back to the actual origins of language.
But this line of investigation had now fallen into disrepute. Meillet showed that
what was at issue was not the origins of grammatical forms but their transformations.
He was thus able to present the notion of the creation of grammatical forms
as a legitimate, indeed a central, object of study for linguistics.
In his article "L' evolution des formes grammaticales" (1912), Meillet describes
how new grammatical forms emerge through two processes. One is the wellknown
fact of analogy, whereby new paradigms come into being through formal
resemblance to already established paradigms. (An example of analogy in recent
English would be the replacement of the plural shoen by shoes through analogy
to such established plurals as stones.) The second way in which new grammatical
forms come into being, Meillet suggested, is through grammaticalization, "the
passage of an autonomous word to the role of grammatical element" (1912: 131).
Meillet illustrates the synchronic result of this process with the French verb
erre 'to be,' which ranges in meaning from a fu ll existential ontological sense, as
in je suis celui qui suis 'I am the one who is [lit. am],' to a somewhat less fu ll
locative sense inje suis chez moi 'I am at home,' to an almost redundant sense in
je suis malade 'I am ill,' je suis maudit 'I am cursed,' and to a purely grammatical
function as a tense-aspect auxiliary in je suis parti 'I left,' je me suis prol1lelle
'I went for a walk.'
The most significant, and remarkable, part of this fundamental article is Meillel's
confident assertion: "These two processes, analogical innovation and the attribution
of grammatical character to a previously autonomous word. are the only ones by
which new grammatical forms are constituted. The details may be complex in any
individual case; but the principles are always the same" (1912: 131). Later in the
same article, Meillet goes even further. Analogy can only operate when a nucleus
of forms has already emerged to which new forms can be assimilated. So analogy
is ruled out as a primary source of new grammatical forms. Therefore, "the only
process left is the progressive attribution of a grammatical role to autonomous
words or to ways of grouping words" (1912: 132). In every case where certainty
is possible, Meillet contends, this is the origin of grammatical forms. Nothing
stands in the way of assuming that when allowance has been made for analogical
extension the same kind of source can ultimately be attributed to forms of unknown
or uncertain origin also.
Considering that during the neogrammarian period all investigations of grammatical
morphology had been essentially investigations of analogy, Meillet's statement
was sweeping and radical. Writing of the transformation of autonomous