TY - BOOK ID - 505673 TI - Grammaticalization and language change : new reflections AU - Davidse, Kristin AU - Cornillie, Bert PY - 2012 VL - v. 130 SN - 01657763 SN - 9789027205971 9789027273239 9027205973 9027273235 128389534X 9781283895347 PB - Amsterdam: John Benjamins, DB - UniCat KW - Grammar KW - Dialectology KW - Grammar, Comparative and general KW - Linguistic change KW - Grammaticalization. KW - Linguistic change. KW - Grammar, Comparative and general -- Grammaticalization. KW - Languages & Literatures KW - Philology & Linguistics KW - Grammaticalization KW - Change, Linguistic KW - Language change KW - Historical linguistics KW - Language and languages KW - Semantics KW - Syntax KW - Changement linguistique KW - Linguistics KW - Philology KW - Grammar, Comparative and general - Grammaticalization. KW - Grammaire comparative et générale KW - Grammaticalisation UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:505673 AB - This study focuses on "the many careers of negative polarity items", taking a diachronic perspective on NPIs in general and on scalar NPIs in particular. Its main thesis is that scalar NPIs are prototypical NPIs. The downward entailing contexts of NPIs can be explained and made cognitively accessible by the pragmatic mechanisms associated with scalar NPIs, viz. the capacity to evoke alternatives (ALT) and the scalar interpretation of these alternatives (SCALE). NPIs with standard contexts of distribution are, or are otherwise tied to, scalar expressions, while NPIs with an idiosyncratic range ER -