Unidirectionality in Grammaticalization and Lexical Shift: The Case of English RATHER

Abstract

Traditional models of grammaticalization posit a process (or a set of processes) whereby words belonging to one lexical class shift to another lexical class considered to be more grammatical. In this paper I argue that the seemingly unrelated shift of English rather from comparative adverb to verb shows that such a model for grammaticalization is untenable.