4 Maximizing the data-drivenness of grammaticalization research
Lauren Fonteyn, Enrique Manjavacas · 2023
This paper looks into the grammaticalization of to death from a resultative phrase into an intensifying expression, by describing the process in terms of changes in compositionality, productivity and schematicity and subsequently outlining a procedure in which the investigation of changes along these parameters is approached in a ‘maximally data-driven’ way. By doing so, we show that functionalsemantic explorations of grammaticalization need not be at odds with a radically data-driven, ‘hands-off’, quantitative methodology. Yet, at the same time, we acknowledge that there are still some limitations associated with ‘hands-off’ functional- semantic analysis, and argue that, to determine its reliability, it will prove valuable to extensively revisit known cases of grammaticalization.