This book presents the state of the art in research on grammaticalization, the process by which lexical items acquire grammatical function, grammatical items get additional functions, and grammars are created. Leading scholars from around the world introduce and discuss the core theoretical and methodological bases of grammaticalization, report on work in the field, and point to promising directions for new research. They represent every relevant theoretical perspective and approach.

Research on grammaticalization and its role in linguistic change encompasses work on languages from every major linguistic family. Its results offer valuable insights for all theoretical frameworks, including generative, construction, and cognitive grammar, and relate to work in fields such as phonology, sociolinguistics, and language acquisition. The handbook is divided into five parts, of which the first two are devoted to theory and method, the third and fourth to work in linguistic domains, classes, and cateogories, and the fifth to case studies of grammaticalization in a range of languages. It will be an indispensable source of information and inspiration for all those who wish to know more about this fascinating and important field.

About the Author:
Heiko Narrog, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Tohoku University, Bernd Heine, Emeritus Professor, Institute of African Studies, University of Cologne

Heiko Narrog is Professor at the Graduate School of International Cualtural Studies, Tohoku University. He received a PhD in Japanese Studies from the Ruhr University Bochum in 1997, and a PhD in Language Studies from Tokyo University in 2002. His publications inclde Modality in Japanese and the Layered Structure of the Clause (Benjamins, 2009), and Modality, Subjectivity, and Semantic Change: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective (OUP, 2012) as well as numerous articles in linguistic typology, semantics and language change, and Japanese linguistics.

Bernd Heine is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of African Studies and Egyptology, University of Cologne. He has held visiting professorships at universities across the world, and in 2009 received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Evolutionary Linguistics Association. His many publications include African Languages: An Introduction (CUP, 200), A Linguistic Geography of Africa (CUP, 2008), and the OUP volumes The Changing Languages of Europe (2006) and The Genesis of Grammar: A Reconstruction (2007), both with Tania Kuteva.

Heiko Narrog and Bernd Heine are co-editors of the OUP volumes The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis (2010; second edition 2015) and Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective (2018), and o-authors of the OUP textbook Grammaticalization (2021).