Home UK English grammaticalize

Meaning of grammaticalize in English:

grammaticalize

Pronunciation /ɡrəˈmatɪk(ə)lʌɪz/

verb

(also British grammaticalise)
[with object]Linguistics

  • Change (an element) from being one having lexical meaning into one having a largely grammatical function.

    ‘we cannot assume that such notions will necessarily be grammaticalized in the structure of any particular language’
    • ‘The lexical items that become grammaticalized must first serve commonly needed discourse functions.’
    • ‘The fact that concepts are grammaticalized differently in different languages is a major problem for translation, especially for machine translation.’