From Locative Construction to Relative Time: On a Strategy of Grammaticalisation in South Mande

Abstract

The article considers the process of grammaticalisation in Mwan and other South Mande languages. It demonstrates that genetically related, but not necessarily adjacent languages share similar strategies of grammaticalisation. It concludes that these processes are not random and can be explained by the parallel development of the languages belonging to the same group. It shows that while the old forms tend to fade in the process of grammaticalisation, there appear new ones created by the same patterns. Refs 16.