Grammaticalization as space creation: why did an indefinite artilce emerged later than a definite article?

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02614
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Hosei University
• Principal Investigator: OSAWA Fuyo 法政大学, 文学部, 教授 (10194127)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 定冠詞 / 不定冠詞 / 古英語 / 中英語 / 文法化 / 属格 / 言語習得

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The aim of this research is to examine why an indefinite article "a/an" appeared later than a definite artilce "the" in English. I have shown that the emergence of articles has been the result of grammaticalization. Traditionally, grammaticalization is defined as the process whereby lexical items come to serve grammatical functions. I have proved that grammaticalization involves the structural change in a given structure. Furthermore, I have proposed that grammaticalization progresses in two stages: primary grammaticalization and secondary one.
The primary grammaticalization creates a new functional space in a structure. Old English demonstratives "se/seo" contributed to creating a new functional space, i.e., DP. The definite article emerged like this.
The ancestor of an infeinite article numeral an ="one" was grammaticalized due to this functional space DP, which is an instance of secondary grammaticaluzation. This is the reason of the later emergence of an indefinite article.

Free Research Field

人文科学