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The term grammaticalization originally denoted a particular outcome of language change (lexis > morphology), then got expanded to practically all studies involving language change, the processes that create such changes, and a theory modeling these. These expansions have been challenged in the literature as conceptually flawed. A usage-based analysis of the evolution of the concept culminates in the use of the term grammaticalization as a "flag" of a particular approach to linguistics. However, the theoretical premises of grammaticalization studies are entirely compatible with the premises of Diachronic Construction Grammar (DCxG). All studies within the "expanded" concept of grammaticalization can be explicitly modeled within DCxG, which provides formalism of sufficient detail to map the gradual nature of language change in cases of grammaticalization and beyond. Consequently, the most vigorous attacks on grammaticalization lose power when grammaticalization is seen as part of a larger, more complete theory of language and language change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to introduce to the field a particular subtype of valencyreducing strategies, referred to as oblique anticausativization below. This subtype differs from more common and better known dependent-marking types, such as, for instance, the canonical anticausative. Instead, oblique anticausatives are characterized by the preservation of the object case of the transitive-causative alternant, hence the term oblique. This object case marker shows up with the subject of the corresponding intransitive construction. We document the existence of this alternation in seven branches of Indo-European, particularly in the North-Central region, but also sporadically in the South-Eastern parts of the Indo-European area. Ruling out alternative accounts of the relevant geographical distribution, such as borrowing and shared innovation, we argue for a morphosyntactic isogloss common for Germanic, Baltic, Slavic and Italic. This is paralleled by isolated enclaves found in other branches of Indo-European, such as Ancient Greek, Anatolian and Indo-Aryan. Altogether, the evidence speaks for the existence of oblique anticausativization in the proto-language, thus motivating a reconstruction of this alternation for the grammar of Proto-Indo-European. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modality can be expressed through a variety of different linguistic means within and across languages, of which one manifestation is through noncanonical case marking of the subject. In Ancient Greek several predicates show a systematic alternation between constructions with nominative and oblique subjects, which coincides with a difference in meaning, yielding a modal meaning in the latter case. We show how this modal meaning cannot be derived from the meaning of the individual parts of the construction, neither from the lexical material nor from the relevant grammatical elements. Instead, the data call for a constructional analysis of a modal subconstruction of the oblique subject construction, for which the modality must be attributed to the construction itself. We argue that this can be viewed through the lens of subjectification in the sense of Traugott (2003), here demonstrating that the semantic relation holding between the subject referent and the oblique case marking selected by the verb has been extended to the empathic relation holding between the speaker and his/her attitude towards the proposition uttered (Barðdal 2004). This, we believe, is how the concept of modality came to be associated with oblique case marking of subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]