Grammaticalization reconciled: functionalist and minimalist insights into the development of purpose subordinators in English Jerzy Nykiel ⇑ Institute of Romance Languages and Translation Studies, University of Silesia, Grota-Roweckiego 5, 41-205 Sosnowiec, Poland article info Article history: Received 19 March 2013 Received in revised form 30 October 2013 Accepted 31 October 2013 Keywords: Grammaticalization Reanalysis Cycle Purpose clause Functional linguistics Minimalism abstract Two approaches to grammaticalization have emerged over the years, namely functionalist and generativist, and usually a given grammaticalization study usually reflects only one of these points of view. In this paper the development of two English prepositional subordi- nators of purpose is looked into using both perspectives, first functionalist then minimalist, resulting in a more variegated interpretation of the data. A subsequent juxtaposition of the two concepts of grammaticalization reveals that they complement each other to a large extent, the primary area of overlap being the notions of cyclicity and reanalysis. While the two concepts differ in, for example, the answer to the crucial question why grammat- icalization takes place, a proposal is made that each model has potential for accommodat- ing the insights from the other. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The term grammaticalization has been present in linguistics for over a century going back to Meillet (1912) who coined the term and used it to refer to the development of grammatical structures out of lexical material. Up till the 1970’s grammatical- ization was mostly applied to synchronic typological studies set within functional linguistics. Beginning with the 1980’s dia- chronic grammaticalization research gained momentum and has materialized into robust literature on the subject (see Hopper and Traugott, 2003; Le ˛ cki, 2010; Traugott and Trousdale, 2010 for an overview). In what follows I share Hopper and Traugott’s (2003: 18) understanding of grammaticalization as, on the one hand, ‘a research framework for studying the relation- ship between lexical, constructional and grammatical material in language, diachronically and synchronically,’ and on the other hand, ‘a term referring to the change whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve gram- matical functions and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions.’ Hopper and Traugott (2003: 232) add that it is semantic and pragmatic change that sets in motion morphosyntactic shifts in grammaticalization. This long functionalist tradition contrasts with a relatively recent interest in grammaticalization within the generative approach to language. For decades hardly any mention of grammaticalization could be found in the research on formal syn- tax, 1 which has to do with what van Gelderen (2013: 2) calls ‘an inherent tension between generative syntax and historical lin- guistics.’ As for the reasons for the tension, van Gelderen (2013: 2) mentions generativists’ focus on the speaker’s 0388-0001/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.10.010 ⇑ Tel.: +48 600 656764. E-mail address: motley7788@yahoo.com 1 Newmeyer (1998: chap. 5, 2001), a generativist, does devote much space to grammaticalization where he attempts to undermine grammaticalization theory arguing that no principle contained therein is inherent to grammaticalization only. His conclusion is that grammaticalization as a process does not exist. Change described as grammaticalization by functionalists is to him a result of the working of independent mechanisms. Language Sciences 42 (2014) 1–14 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Language Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci